


Chuck Versus the Amber Alert (Chuck 6.04)

by anthropocene



Series: Chuck Season 6 [4]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Crime Fighting, Cybercrimes, Espionage, F/M, Romance, Science Fiction, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropocene/pseuds/anthropocene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Chuck Versus The C G I," and the fourth episode of an imaginary sixth season of "Chuck." Mysterious cyber-criminals are hacking into Southern California's Amber Alert system for nefarious purposes. Guess who they mistakenly target as a helpless victim? Bad move, bad guys!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is a SOUNDTRACK for this episode (as in the actual series). Music cues are embedded in the text, and you can listen while you read! The soundtrack is available on 8tracks dot com; just search on the tag “anthropocene.” You can also find a direct link to the soundtrack on my author Bio page.
> 
> I appreciate hearing from my readers at any time...whether you liked the story or not, or have comments or questions. Even just a few words are always welcome. This is the only compensation a FF author ever gets. So please send me a comment via the box at the end of each chapter...and THANK YOU!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck (Bugs Bunny does), and I mean no copyright infringement in continuing to write episodes for this earnest, though limited, version of a real, live Season 6.

**_"Hi—I'm Chuck! Here are a few things you might need to know, or maybe just forgot…."_ **

_(Flashback to Chuck and Sarah kissing on the beach, and Sarah telling Chuck, "I'm feeling it now—I mean feeling it_ again _…I want this, Chuck. I want to be with you.")_

 _(Flashback to the hotel in Las Vegas, and Ellie suggesting,"Maybe the solution all along wasn't to destroy the Intersect…Maybe we just need to_ domesticate _it"…Chuck picking up the Key and admiringly saying, "Dad's last remaining invention…")_

_(Flashback to the secret cyberwarfare base—Deep Skillet—where CIA agent Juanita Saldana is grandly proclaiming, "You have demonstrated what a human Intersect is capable of doing….Now you can show the rest of the world how to do the same.")_

_(Flashback to the Buy More parking lot, and NSA agent Tameka Cliff telling Chuck, Sarah, and Morgan, "I've been authorized to build you a new secure entrance to Castle. You just need to tell us where you want it to come out.")_

_(Flashback to Chuck and Sarah inside her dream house, and Chuck offering, "I think we can still have this…if that's what you want"…followed by Sarah gently holding his hand against the Sarah + Chuck heart she'd carved in the doorframe…"I do. I want this for us.")_

* * *

**(PROLOGUE)**

**A sunny spring afternoon, at an ice-cream parlor in Burbank**

"Are you really gonna eat _all_ of that, Molly?" asks a wide-eyed Chuck, as their server showily sets a four-scoop banana-split sundae, with mint chocolate chip ice cream, hot fudge, extra whipped cream, and topped by four maraschino cherries—all in a fancy chilled stainless-steel bowl—down on the table in front of his little blonde sister-in-law.

"Noooo— _hee hee_ —silly Chuck!" Molly giggles at him. "I want _you_ to help me eat it!" She holds up two spoons.

"Oh. Well then—let's git 'er done!" Chuck winks at the kindergartner, playfully slides one of the spoons out of her grasp, and starts digging into one of the generous scoops. Meanwhile, Molly lifts a cherry off the billows of whipped cream, bites it off the stem, and makes a funny face at him.

"I think _you're_ the silly one!" Chuck tells her. Idly glancing over Molly's head and across the crowded ice-cream shop, he becomes aware of a solitary man standing near the front door with his back to the wall.

Chuck tenses as his spy training kicks in—there is something _not quite right_ about this man—he's not there with anyone and doesn't seem interested in buying ice cream. Instead, his eyes are slowly sweeping across the room, scanning all of the patrons… _casing the place_ perhaps?

The man looks straight at Chuck and Molly. Chuck gets his first good look at the man's face, and flashes on him: _California Highway Patrol—undercover investigator._

" _That's interesting,"_ Chuck murmurs to himself. Though still alert, just in case the officer's presence signifies some problem in the shop, he turns back to the sundae that Molly is now fiercely devouring on her side.

But before he can plunge back in, his iPhone buzzes with a call from Sarah. He winks at Molly again and lifts the phone to his ear.

"Hey, babe."

_("Hey. How're you two doing?")_

"Spoiling our appetites in a big way."

 _("You'd better watch that!"_ Sarah fires back. _"Don't you forget we're cooking our first dinner together in the new kitchen tonight!")_

"No worries. I've got a six-year-old bottomless pit sitting across from me."

_("Well, don't let her get a tummy ache, either!")_

"Based on previous experience, I seriously doubt that's gonna happen. How did _your_ mission go, baby?"

 _("Ohh, Chuck…ohh sweetie…")_ He can practically feel the heat from his wife's sunny smile emanating from the phone.

( _"We_ found _it! Up in NoHo…Mom and I found the_ perfect _antique four-poster brass bed! Look, I have a picture to show you...")_

A second later, an image of the bed appears on his iPhone screen.

"Hmm. Does look very nice, although all that other stuff cluttered all around doesn't exactly set it off."

_("Yeah—wish you'd been able to see it in person. The dealer said he'd only be able to hold it for us overnight, so we have to decide quickly.")_

"Seems pretty much like a done deal already, babe. You know I always defer to you on the major decorating decisions. Just as long as it's comfortable."

_("Good question. Maybe you and I should sneak into that antique dealer's place tonight and find out.")_

Chuck's face flushes. "Well…I'm glad I didn't have you on speaker, what with your sweet impressionable little sister sitting right here! But I'll bet your Mom just heard that!"

(Laughing, Sarah replies, _"Uh-huh—and she said to tell you that she agrees with me!")_

* * *

**A short time later, headed east on the Ventura Freeway toward home**

_(Music: "Ventura Highway," by America)_

"Mom…I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that you and Molly are here—that you're helping Chuck and me get settled in our new house."

Emma, riding with Sarah in her Lotus Evora, pats her daughter on the knee.

"With so much to make up for, how could I miss it? And I've had such a wonderful day."

"Me too." Sarah beams—and then her cheerful expression turns to one of annoyance, when she sees cars and trucks abruptly stopping in all of the lanes just ahead. She hits the brakes, and they are instantly hemmed in as vehicles stack up around and behind them.

"Wonder what's the matter," asks Sarah, as she leans out her side window and finds only jammed traffic out to the limits of her vision. "Bad accident maybe?"

Emma is staring up at a digital billboard alongside the freeway.

"Maybe it's because of this," she suggests—and points to the billboard, which proclaims AMBER ALERT in big yellow-orange block letters, above a blurry photo of a smiling little blonde girl, seated behind what appears to be a heaping dish of ice cream.

"Oh, that's so awful," Sarah murmurs, as she glances up at the billboard—then fixes her gaze on the image of the little girl, who looks _very_ familiar—

—as Emma, in an alarmed tone, asks, "Sarah…it's hard to be certain…but doesn't that girl look a lot like…Molly?"

"Yes—I was thinking the same thing." Sarah's eyes shift down from the picture to a license plate number emblazoned prominently on the screen just beneath it.

"Oh my God—Mom— _that's the plate on Chuck's car!"_

And Sarah immediately reaches for her iPhone.

* * *

**On the same freeway, a few miles ahead**

Chuck is behind the wheel of his Nerd Herder, newly repainted silvery sea-blue to cover the old red-and-white company paint and logos. Molly rides in the back, securely belted into a late-model child seat, engrossed in a _Max and Ruby_ e-book on an iPad mini.

Chuck drives carefully and perceptively, especially with such a precious passenger aboard. Even so, it takes a few minutes and several glances into his center rear-view mirror before it dawns on him that the freeway is completely free of traffic behind him—except for a set of flashing red-and-blue lights on a police motorcycle, still a ways back but gaining in the leftmost lane. Chuck, already driving at the speed limit, eases his car over into the far right lane, to give the officer plenty of room.

His iPhone, resting on the center console, begins to buzz.

Molly leans forward in her seat to look at the screen. "It's Sarah."

"Yes, it is…but Sarah knows it's not safe to answer a call while you're driving, honey. Our exit's coming up, and then I'll pull over and call her back."

"Okay." Molly turns her attention back to Max and Ruby. Chuck looks into the rear-view mirror again, and sees that the motorcycle officer—a policewoman, he can tell now—has also moved to the right and is about to overtake him on his left side. She turns on her siren.

" _Aw come on,"_ he mutters under his breath. _"It's not like I was speeding."_

The woman is a California Highway Patrol officer—a petite brunette. She looks at Chuck through midnight-black sunglasses and motions to him to pull over. He shakes his head in irritation, flicks the turn signal, and glides to a gentle stop on the shoulder, just shy of the abutment of an overpass.

"What's happening, Chuck?" Molly asks him, sounding worried.

"I don't know—but I'm sure it's a mistake. We haven't done anything wrong."

The motorcycle officer brakes at the back end of Chuck's car, but makes no immediate move to get off her bike. And then—seemingly out of nowhere—three CHP cruisers pounce, screeching onto the shoulder to surround them on the front, back, and right side! A half-dozen troopers leap out of the vehicles—some with their guns already drawn.

Molly screams in terror. Chuck turns to try and calm her, but now a CHP trooper is pounding angrily on his driver-side window.

" _Out of the car now! Hands where we can see them!"_

Chuck fumbles with his seat belt until he manages to unfasten it, then starts to open the car door. The trooper yanks it the rest of the way open, reaches in to grab Chuck by the collar, and roughly drags him out onto the pavement, on his knees.

" _Hey!_ Easy now, Carelli—no need for _that!"_ chides the petite brunette officer, standing just to the side. But Carelli only snickers. He tugs both of Chuck's arms backward, preparing to cuff him. Chuck hears the throbbing growl of a helicopter hovering directly overhead: police… _or TV news?_ He keeps his face turned toward the ground.

Inside the car, Molly is crying piteously. Still on the ground with his arms pinioned by Officer Carelli, Chuck is furious. His eyes blaze—and unbidden, the Intersect flashes and primes him for a fight. He knows he could take Carelli and at least half of the other officers out in no time at all—but _then what?_ So Chuck clenches his jaws and allows himself to be handcuffed.

"You're frightening my little sister!" Chuck protests as he is hoisted to his feet, still keeping his head down.

Carelli looks at him with disgust.

"It's a little late to start showing concern for her—you _creep!"_

"What the _hell_ are you talking about? What am I being charged with?"

"Kidnapping," the brunette motorcycle officer coolly replies. "For starters."

 

 

 

 

 

 

_(Opening credits and "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" theme by Cake)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I swear on a stack of uncensored CIA files that I do not own Chuck

**Late afternoon, at the California Highway Patrol station in Altadena**

_(WHAM!)_

Sarah throws open the front door and strides into the station, in a black leather jacket with her hair flaring out behind her and a take-no-prisoners scowl on her face. In her wake, a few feet behind, come Emma and—tanned and nattily dressed, as always—Julio Johnson, the attorney for Carmichael Industries. A handful of random people who had been hovering in the middle of the lobby scatter, as Sarah storms the front desk and gets right in the face of the CHP officer on duty.

"My name is Sarah Bartowski. _Where are my husband and sister?"_

Taken aback, the duty officer nervously gestures over his right shoulder. In a cubicle just behind him, the brunette lady motorcycle officer sits with Molly—who now seems reasonably composed and is again reading her e-book, though her eyes are still red and puffy from plenty of crying.

" _Molly!"_ Emma calls out to her.

"Mommy!" The little girl drops her iPad on the bench and runs tearfully into Emma's arms. "Mommy—Mommy—they put Chuck in _jail!"_

" _Whaaat?"_ Sarah indignantly slaps her palm on the desk—and the duty officer shrinks a little more in his chair.

The brunette CHP officer joins them. "That's not really accurate," she says. "For the moment, Mr. Bartowski's waiting in a holding cell in the back, but we…um…we understand…a mistake may have been made."

She turns to Johnson. "You're his counsel…I presume?"

"Yes—and _you_ are….?"

"I'm Lieutenant Drea Ortega. We responded to an Amber Alert, sir—time is always a critical factor. And Mr. Bartowski and the little girl fit the profile perfectly—right down to the license plates."

"I'd say they were _set up_ perfectly," Johnson counters. "Who activated the alert?"

"That…um…well, that's the problem, sir—we don't know. Not yet. But we do suspect it was a hoax or prank, with Mr. Bartowski the unlucky random victim. It does happen on occasion."

"Then _why_ is my husband _still_ locked up?" asks Sarah in her most icily menacing voice.

"We're sorry, ma'am," the duty officer answers her. "We just need official confirmation from the parent or guardian that this really wasn't an abduction—"

"Of _course_ it wasn't!" Emma cuts in. "Obviously I'm Molly's mother—and Chuck is my son-in-law!"

While still cradling Molly in one arm, Emma reaches into her handbag with the other and extracts her driver's license. Ortega takes a quick look at it, then nods at the the duty officer, who presses an intercom key at his desk and barks, "Send Charles Bartowski out front—now!"

Moments later, a barred door opens and Chuck comes through it, beaming lightheartedly at the sight of his rescuers. Sarah goes from fearsome to elated in two long, lithe bounds to his side, and they embrace and kiss. Then Chuck hugs Emma and Molly, and shares a handshake with Julio Johnson.

Johnson ushers Chuck and Sarah to the far side of the room for a private discussion. Lt. Ortega waits nearby—outwardly unperturbed, but inwardly anxious.

"It's my professional obligation," Johnson quietly informs Chuck, "to let you know that you _might_ have grounds for a false-arrest lawsuit, if you chose to pursue that."

Chuck shakes his head. "No—let it be," he says, loudly enough for Ortega to hear. "It _was_ an Amber Alert, after all…I really can't blame 'em for just doing their jobs."

The attorney nods in approval, then steps up to the desk to confer with the duty officer, and confirm that Chuck is fully cleared and free to go. Meanwhile, Chuck and Sarah join Emma, who still has Molly in her arms.

"Could this cause any other problems down the road?" Chuck softly asks both ladies. "You know—because of Molly's history?"

"She has a birth certificate and she's legally my daughter," Emma replies. "I never knew how, but I figured it was Sarah's doing."

Sarah purses her lips in frustration. "Probably called in a favor with someone back then. I wish I could remember it, Mom..."

Emma reaches out with her free hand, and gently squeezes her daughter's wrist to reassure her. "I know...it's all right."

They drop their _sotto voce_ conversation as Lt. Ortega joins them. Looking deeply embarrassed, the CHP officer simply says, "Thank you."

Sarah glowers at her and Emma frowns, but Chuck shrugs. "It's okay. I wish you hadn't had to put such a scare into Molly—but no hard feelings."

"I'm truly sorry for everything," Ortega continues. "I assure you, we intend to track down whoever it was that did this to you—and to us."

"Glad to hear it. What about my car?"

"I had it brought here. You can get your keys from the duty officer. Oh—and if you're worried about being hassled by any reporters, don't be. They all think you were taken to the Monterey Park station."

"I appreciate that," says Chuck.

Ortega smiles sweetly at him before she turns away and heads back into the station.

Watching her go, Sarah observes, "She sort of looks like that little sandwich girl who had a thing for you. What was her name again?"

Emma murmurs to Molly, _"Let's go get your iPad,"_ and prudently carries her away.

Chuck momentarily considers fibbing—that he can't recall the name either—then mutters, "Lou."

"Oh right," Sarah says flatly. "Lou."

Chuck nimbly forestalls any further discussion of that topic by grabbing his wife and kissing her for a while—until her heartbeat races and her cheeks flush.

* * *

**About an hour later, at the Bartowskis' new suburban home**

Neither Chuck nor Sarah feels like cooking now—so on their way home, Chuck and Molly pick up an extra-large no-olives supreme pizza and an antipasto salad, while Sarah and Emma stop for beer for the adults and fruit juice for Molly. Emma spreads a tablecloth on the floor of the partly furnished living room, and the four of them have a picnic supper in front of Chuck and Sarah's high-definition TV.

" _Good evening—it's Southland Network News at six! Our top story is a brazen heist this afternoon at a Burbank diamond wholesaler…."_

A street-level video clip of the stricken establishment flashes on the screen. Its front wall is twisted and sheared, and there is an enormous oval-shaped hole where the front door had been. Deep inside the darkened store, the back end of some kind of humongous, blocky vehicle is barely visible.

"Hey!" yells Chuck. "That's just around the block from where Molly and I stopped for ice cream! Must've happened right after we left the area."

"Interesting coincidence?" muses Sarah.

"Or not," replies Chuck.

"… _three masked gunmen broke into the business in a very Hollywood way—by crashing a stolen Hummer right through the door! The owners—shaken up but unhurt—report the gunmen were in and out in what seemed like seconds, escaping with an estimated quarter-million dollars worth of raw and cut diamonds. The California Highway Patrol reports that the getaway vehicle is a—"_

"Is this a typical day in Burbank?" Emma asks—then quips, "Are you two really sure _this_ is the place you want to settle down and raise a family?"

Sarah playfully swats her mother's arm.

" _And staying on the subject of the CHP—an Amber Alert was activated today…."_

Sarah sets her plate down, picks up the remote, and turns up the volume. As the news anchor begins the report, the caption at the bottom of the screen reads AMBER ALERT—OR WAS IT?

"Mm'zactly!" says Chuck, as indignantly as he can manage with a mouthful of pizza.

"… _was later declared to be false—but not before the CHP briefly took an unidentified man into custody, as seen in this video from Chopper SNN, by our ace traffic reporter Seymour Packard—Sy in the Sky!"_

Emma lifts Molly into her lap and holds her—and at the same time, Sarah slides closer to Chuck and slips her arm around his back.

The video clip zooms in from above on the scene of Chuck's arrest. It shows Chuck—keeping his face fully concealed from the camera overhead—being cuffed and then placed in the back of one of the CHP cruisers, while Lt. Ortega reaches into the back seat of the Nerd Herder to attend to Molly.

"Is that _you,_ Chuck?" asks his little sister-in-law, all wide-eyed. "You're on TV!"

"Uh-huh," he softly replies. A moment later, he adds, "My fifteen seconds of fame," which causes Sarah and Emma to laugh in spite of themselves.

" _The man, who was not named, was later released without being charged."_

"I'm glad it was anonymous fame," Sarah says fervently.

"Roger that, babe."

" _A CHP spokeswoman, Lieutenant Andrea Ortega, offered no explanation for the second bogus Amber Alert to occur in as many weeks."_

A stock photo of Ortega appears on screen, with a voice-over apparently excerpted from a telephone interview with her:

" _We believe it was a hoax and we are investigating. CHP does get anywhere from five to fifteen false Amber Alerts each year, so this should not necessarily be considered a cause for undue concern."_

"That's easy for _her_ to say," mutters Chuck.

* * *

After dinner is over, Emma takes Molly upstairs to help her brush her teeth and get ready for bed, leaving Sarah and Chuck together on the couch they'd brought over from the apartment in Echo Park.

"Now don't get _too_ comfortable, sweetie," warns Sarah as Chuck stretches out and rests his head in her lap. "Remember Molly asked you to read her a bedtime story."

"And she'll have it. Maybe even an encore, if she manages to stay awake."

Sarah smiles and caresses his face.

"So…you think that robbery and the Amber Alert were related somehow?" she asks.

"Could be. Weird stuff was going on. There was an undercover CHP cop in the ice-cream shop just beforehand—I flashed on him. That doesn't seem like coincidence."

"No…it doesn't. You thinking of doing something about it?"

"I'm thinking there's already plenty on our plate."

"That wasn't a yes or no answer."

"Nothing gets by you, baby."

"Better believe it," Sarah says, and leans down to plant a loud, wet, playful smack on his lips.

Chuck sighs happily and asks, "By the way—how sound a sleeper is your mom?"

* * *

**Early the next morning, at the offices of Carmichael Industries**

Chuck and Sarah arrive shortly after sunrise. Expecting another day of disarray in a workplace that has been undergoing surreptitious remodeling for over a week, they've come dressed casually in faded jeans and untucked alumni polo shirts. But their affinities are flipped: Sarah has on a cardinal top from Stanford, and Chuck is wearing a crimson shirt from Harvard.

Chuck uses his palmprint on the biometric front-door lock, newly installed in a concealed recess beneath the mailbox. He holds the door open for Sarah and follows her in. They pause in the foyer; listen for a moment…and then exchange high-fives and delighted looks.

"Hear that?" Sarah asks. "The sound of _nothing!"_

"Yeah—no more drilling, sawing, welding…."

Sarah runs her finger over the polished surface of the reception desk. "And no more dust either!"

"The Corps of Engineers crew must have finished up overnight," Chuck suggests.

"Indeed, Mr. Bartowski," says NSA Special Agent Tameka Cliff—unexpectedly emerging from the rear of the office suite, and looking sharp and fresh in a blue chambray work shirt, khakis, and white hard hat. Sarah eyes her own outfit a little self-consciously.

"Geez!" Chuck exclaims. "Don't you ever _sleep,_ Agent Cliff?"

"Not much…not until after my work is done. So are you both ready to take the first ride in your new elevator?"

"Please! Lead the way."

Sarah and Chuck follow Tameka to the back of the suite, past the outer offices and the conference room, to their own paired executive offices and the shared private bathroom that adjoins them.

The NSA agent points to the brass lever-style door handle on the bathroom door.

"It has concealed, embedded sensors keyed to both of your thumbprints, and you can easily add those of Mr. Grimes and Ms. McHugh—or anyone else you wish to grant access to Castle. Try it out, Mr. Bartowski."

Chuck takes hold of the door handle and waits for further instructions, as Sarah looks on.

"It appears to be nothing more than the door handle for the bathroom," continues Tameka, "but if you engage the sensors and turn it _this_ way"—she cups her hand over Chuck's and twists the handle clockwise—"the door will slide to the right and give you access to the secret elevator."

" _Wowww,"_ breathes Chuck as the door smoothly retracts to reveal the cab of a small elevator, sleek with glass and polished metal. "But what happens if you turn the handle the _other_ way?"

"Then it's the door to the bathroom, Mr. Bartowski. Shall we?"

Sarah, Chuck, and Tameka enter the cab—and nearly fill it.

"Capacity of four adults, per your specifications," the NSA agent notes, as the elevator begins to descend. "There's a dumbwaiter concealed in the break room that you can use to transport supplies and equipment in and out."

The ride down takes only a few seconds. Chuck is visibly excited to be returning to their base, whereas Sarah seems to be more resigned to it than pleased.

The elevator doors open, and right in front of them is the old familiar gunmetal-grey, fluorescent-lit corridor leading into the heart of Castle.

"Looks right," says Sarah. "I see you removed the portal to the NCS Intersect Lab."

"Yes," Tameka replies. "And we filled that entire bombed-out lab with concrete. Leaving only the original Castle."

Chuck takes a few steps into the corridor and admiringly runs his fingertips over the new segment of smooth steel-clad wall, which is indistinguishable from the older walls on either side of it.

"Nice work," he murmurs.

"And…maybe an opportunity to implant a few surveillance devices down here? A little gift from our former employers?" asks a more dubious Sarah.

Tameka laughs. "No ma'am. And to be honest, I don't know why I _didn't_ get any orders to do that. Probably because they knew full well that you'd find them."

(Sarah rolls her eyes at Chuck; he nods; and without saying anything, they've just agreed on what their first moving-in chore will be.)

"Shall we continue with the walk-through?" asks Tameka, oblivious to their exchange. "I'm a day overdue for my next project, so it'd be a big help if we could sign off on this one…."

* * *

**Twenty minutes later**

_(Music: "Flying Saucer," by The Groove Noodles)_

After the walk-through is done, and Tameka has shaken hands with them and departed for the last time, Chuck and Sarah put her word to the test. They take out all of the detectors, probes, and sniffers that Carmichael Industries owns…and begin a methodical top-to-bottom, front-to-back search of Castle for hidden bugs.

They find none—but all the while, Sarah is making rediscoveries: opening drawers and cabinets to remind herself what's inside them; picking up and leafing through random files and notebooks; hefting and swinging a wooden quarterstaff in the training room; trying out the swivel chairs at the briefing table…and on and on….

Sarah is so absorbed in re-learning Castle that she doesn't seem to notice the way Chuck keeps looking up from his own work to watch her—or how he smiles with affection every time she uncovers something else that evokes a sigh, or a thrill, or a tear, or a soft _gasp_ of recollection.

But then, all of a sudden, she sets her scanner down—by now it's clear that the whole base is clean—and turns toward Chuck, halfway across the room. She catches him peeking at her, and chuckles when he awkwardly tries to act busy again.

"I guess I must look all silly and sentimental," she suggests in a low voice.

Chuck immediately puts his own sensing device aside and comes over to hold her. "No, no—not at all, baby. I think it's wonderful. And important too."

Sarah nods in agreement. "I didn't expect to respond this way. I mean, the last time I was here, right after Quinn—I guess I just wasn't ready for this. But _now_ …looking all around, reconnecting with…with _our stuff_ —so much is coming back to me. Briefings…missions…planning dangerous work…alongside you."

"We did spend a lot of time together in this place. And Castle's a majorly big part of how you and I became... _us."_

Chuck's words give Sarah a little shiver. She slips her hands behind his neck and pulls his face to hers for an intense kiss. Afterward, she tilts her head and slyly asks, "Umm…Chuck? Down here, did we ever…?"

He laughs. "Should I be upset that you didn't remember _that?_ The exercise mats in the training room turned out to be _really_ comfortable."

Sarah pinches him and moves in for another kiss, but she's interrupted by the soft chime of an intrusion alarm. She drops her arms and they both swing around for a look at the nearest monitor screen: it's Morgan and Alex, letting themselves in through the front door of the office suite.

Thinking quickly, Chuck grabs his wife's hand and pulls her toward the armory. "Let's have a little fun!"

* * *

**Seconds later, in the office suite**

Morgan walks through the suite, looking mystified. "Huh! Wonder where they could be…."

"Are you sure you saw _their_ car in the lot?" asks Alex, who's a bit annoyed at having to rearrange the items on the reception desk out front. The secret construction crew had been considerate enough to dust everything but not careful enough to put things back where they had been.

"You know anyone _else_ who drives a black Lotus in this neighborhood?" Morgan asks, as he rejoins her in the front lobby.

"Good point. Hmm…you think maybe they got into Castle?"

And just then, _all the lights go out._ With the blinds having been pulled down over all the windows, the C. I. office suite is remarkably dark—the only illumination is the faint green EXIT light over the front door.

"What's happening?" asks Alex, more curious than unnerved.

"Dunno. Maybe a power failure?" Morgan happens to glance downward—and sees the tiny, blazing red dot of a laser gunsight—fixed on his chest! _"What the hell?"_

He looks toward his lady—another red dot—there's a gun aimed at _her_ too! Morgan leaps to shield her, as _(phut!..phut!)_ two soft missiles hit him squarely in the midsection, and bounce noiselessly to the floor.

"Huh?" Morgan squats, gropes in the dark on the floor in front of him, and comes up with a rubber-tipped foam dart. As he returns to his feet _—(phut!)—_ he gets another one on the chin!

" _Ohh-kaaay_ you guys! This is _hardly_ sporting, firing on unarmed civilians!"

Chuck emerges from the inky shadows with a Nerf pistol in hand.

"Fair enough, buddy." He reaches behind his back and pulls two more pistols out of his belt. "Catch!" He tosses one to Morgan and one to Alex, and stealthily retreats down the hallway.

" _Hey!"_ cries Sarah from somewhere in the dark just ahead of him. "That's giving aid and comfort to the enemy, you…you traitor!" _(Phut!)_ The deadly ex-assassin nails her husband right in the forehead! Then she turns to run—an unwise move that gives her position away and enables Chuck to shoot her in the left butt cheek.

Meanwhile, Morgan and Alex have gone on the offensive—and a fiercely fought, no-rules, laughter-soaked foam-dart firefight ensues, through all of the darkened rooms and halls of the corporate offices of Carmichael Industries.

The battle abruptly ends when the front doorbell rings.

Breathing hard from exertion, Chuck reaches into his pocket for the remote control that turns the lights back on. Sarah gathers up all the weapons and stashes them in the break room. Alex readjusts her hair and clothes and goes to the front door to admit their visitor—Lieutenant Ortega!

She's dressed in civilian clothes and scrunched up close to the doorway, as if trying to evade detection. Even before Alex can open the door all the way, Ortega hustles into the building.

"What are _you_ doing here?" asks Chuck incredulously.

"How did you _find_ us?" adds Sarah.

"I'll explain everything," Ortega tells them. "I need your help."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Only one of these three statements is correct: I look exactly like Alec Baldwin. I sing just like Vik Sahay. I do not own the rights to "Chuck."

Chuck ushers Lt. Ortega into the C. I. conference room. Sarah directs Morgan and Alex to stand by and stay on guard, then follows her husband and their visitor into the room and closes the door.

"This room looks ordinary enough, but we've reinforced it against all forms of external surveillance," Chuck assures Ortega as the three of them take seats around the conference table. "It's secure."

"So you can speak safely—and _freely,"_ Sarah pointedly adds, having noticed that the CHP officer hasn't seemed at all surprised by the cloak-and-dagger treatment.

"Thanks, Ms. Bartowski," Ortega says. "I'm very sorry for landing on your doorstep without any heads-up, but I had good reason. I hope you'll hear me out."

"That much we can promise," Chuck attests.

"The CHP is working together with the FBI on this Amber Alert problem. The Bureau considers it a case of domestic cyberterrorism. I'm one of several officers serving as liaisons."

Chuck and Sarah exchange quick, intrigued glances before he asks, "So it's worse than what you said on the TV news last night?"

Ortega sighs. "I'm afraid it is. The bogus alert that ensnared you was the third one in the last month and a half. None of them were like the prank calls we typically get. Someone has found a way to actually hack into the Amber Alert notification system for Southern California—and has been activating it at will."

"Was yesterday's alert connected to the diamond robbery?" asks Sarah.

"I think it was. The two previous hoaxes coincided in time and location with carefully executed high-dollar heists—one was an armored car and the other was a gold dealer. The alerts always come at or near rush hour, so they're well-timed to distract law enforcement _and_ tie up traffic all around the vicinity—"

" _Knew it,"_ mutters Chuck.

"Nobody's been hurt, fortunately—not _yet_ —but sooner or later…"

"This is all interesting, Lieutenant, but it doesn't explain why you came here," Sarah presses her.

"Yes…I was getting to that, Ms. Bartowski." Ortega turns toward Chuck. "I'm here because of what the FBI told me about _you."_

The policewoman pauses, expecting them to react with shock, or at least surprise. But Sarah just wrinkles her brow—and Chuck, just as imperturbed, simply says, "Go on."

"There's some kind of big secret 'hands-off' order on the both of you—they called it a '403-g.' Never heard of _that_ one before. Do either of you have any idea—?"

"Is that a capital G or lower-case?" Sarah asks.

" _Huh?_ How would _I_ know? Does it make a difference?"

"It could," Chuck chimes in, as Sarah nods sagely.

"You're not making fun of me, are you?"

"Not at all," Sarah insists. "We're detail-oriented."

Lt. Ortega—probably accustomed to being the one in control during an interrogation—seems to have been knocked a little off balance.

"Well..whatever…okay, how about _this_ then, Mr. Bar—"

"Chuck. You can call me Chuck."

"All _right_ … _Chuck_ …not five minutes after you left our custody with your family yesterday, two of my FBI contacts came rushing in all hot as hell. They'd have made me release you on the spot, if your wife hadn't already come for you. _And_ they told me that I was done with you—that I should have no further contact."

"Then why _did_ you come here _,_ Lieutenant?" asks Sarah.

Ortega grins and folds her arms on top of the table.

"Well…I may work with 'em, but that doesn't mean I take orders from 'em!"

_That_ comment gets real smiles out of Sarah and Chuck alike.

"All they did was make me curious," Ortega continues. "So I investigated. I still have no idea why the FBI wants you left alone, but I did find out about your company— _and_ that you specialize in high-level cybersecurity services."

"That we do," Chuck says.

"And I'm beginning to suspect"—Ortega's gaze sweeps tellingly around the secure conference room—"that this FBI 403-g order has something to do with your firm being especially good at what you do. Like maybe national-security good."

Instead of responding to her inference, Chuck just asks, "You're really here for our help, then?"

Sarah quickly adds, "Is this an official request by the California Highway Patrol?"

Ortega groans. _"That_ would require the approval of my supervisor, and _his_ supervisor, and probably a few more of 'em on up the chain. Some of _those_ silverbacks aren't even convinced we have a problem yet."

"And that'd also bring the FBI in, wouldn't it?" reasons Chuck.

"Most likely—and then we're back to the 403-g. Now, the Bureau is fully aware of the threat, but their cybercrime unit isn't making much headway. Our unknown hackers appear to be especially good themselves."

Chuck's eyes light up. "C. I.'s good for a challenge. The difficult we do right away—and the impossible just takes us a bit more time—"

Sarah is chuckling softly behind her hand, but Ortega looks distressed, and holds up her hand to interrupt his attempt at sloganeering.

"That's good to know, Chuck, but before we go any farther—I can't pay you. At least not in advance. There _would_ be a sizable reward if you helped us nab the perps."

"Otherwise it's _pro bono_ …well, it wouldn't be the first," says Sarah philosophically.

"I'm hoping to appeal to your protective nature. I saw how you both were with your cute little sister—name's Molly, right? Suppose some real pervert had made off with her—or someone else's little daughter—but the Amber Alert system was so compromised that it couldn't function?"

Both Sarah and Chuck shudder, then look to each other and nod in accord.

* * *

**At the same time, fourteen miles to the southwest, in Santa Monica**

_(Music: "Before Your Very Eyes...," by Atoms for Peace)_

A brick-red Chevy Camaro pulls off a busy boulevard into a mostly empty strip-mall parking lot, and coasts to a idling stop near the front entrance of the biggest and most prominent business in the row of shops and cafés: a Cheezy Chaz Arcade Pizzeria. The chain restaurant is still several hours from opening for the day, and the interior is silent and dark. But the big windows out front are splashed with a life-size mural of bouncing clowns clutching rainbow balloons, small furry animals riding longboards, and achingly adorable kids of all sizes and ethnicities munching delightedly on pizza slices or playing video games. A banner slung above the door, twitching in the light breeze, announces that this is THE PLACE FOR BIRTHDAYS! BAR MITZVAHS! QUINCEAÑERAS! FUNDRAISERS! WEDDING RECEPTIONS!

The driver of the Camaro rolls down his window. It's the same mysterious man who made Chuck and Molly his previous marks over in Burbank! Two tablet computers displaying street maps and aerial photos occupy the front passenger seat next to him. He takes a smartphone off the dashboard and snaps a few quick photos of the Cheezy Chaz, then brings the phone to his ear to make a call.

" _It's perfect. About two miles away. Transport route is clear. Sending photos now. Tell our clients we're nearly good to go."_

A moment later, he rolls his window back up and drives away.

* * *

**Back at Carmichael Industries**

"We'll help you, Lieutenant," Chuck says.

Visibly pleased, she pats his forearm. "Drea. Please."

"Okay, Drea. There's just one problem. If this 403-g means we can't be seen around your shop, how do I get a look at your code? I'm not going to just go and hack into CHP's system. I mean—I could _do_ it—but I'd rather stay on this side of legal."

"Of course, Chuck, of course. I'll have to arrange something else. For now, if you'd lend me a laptop or tablet for a minute, I can at least show you what we're up against."

Sarah swivels around, takes a laptop out of a drawer behind her, and sets it down in front of their new client. Ortega speedily opens a browser and logs into the CHP intranet, as Sarah rolls her chair a little closer, and Chuck comes around the table to stand behind her. As both Bartowskis carefully watch the policewoman's every action, Chuck gently rests his right hand on his wife's shoulder, and Sarah reaches up for it with her left.

Lt. Ortega wields several passwords to proceed efficiently through nested firewalls marked with imposing badge icons and harsh warnings. Finally, she reaches the main operations page for the Southern California Amber Alert system.

"Our perps figured out how to manipulate it from the outside," she notes. _"I_ can't—not from here. But I can replay one of the bogus alerts to show what happened."

"Let's look at the one yesterday," proposes Chuck, as Sarah involuntarily jolts beneath his hand. "I'd like to see how I got caught up in this."

"Can do." Ortega enters a time and geographic coordinates, and a Google Map image of downtown Burbank appears on the screen. A red dot is blinking in the middle of a packed parking lot.

"Right in front of the place where Molly and I were having ice cream," observes Chuck.

"That's the initiating 911 call at 4:19 pm. Probably right after they picked you as their patsy. Red means that it wasn't traceable—probably came from a burner cell phone."

"Shouldn't the 911 operator have been able to tell that?" Sarah asks. "Is there a recording of the call?"

"There's sure _supposed_ to be." Ortega types in another command, which zooms the image out to a wider view of Burbank. A red arrow extends out from the blinking dot to the 911 dispatch center, and the words CONNECTED 16:20 appear on screen, followed by an audio player.

"That'd be the call. Check this out." She starts the playback—but the recording is nothing but a white-noise hum.

"That's bizarre," Chuck says.

Ortega gives them an ironic smile. "It gets crazier—trust me. There's a _very_ specific set of criteria that have to be met before an Amber Alert can be activated. The 911 operator is supposed to triage the call, take down as much info as possible, and forward everything to the command center downtown."

The time stamp on the screen rolls over to 16:23, and now a blue arrow shoots across the screen from the dispatch center to the command center.

"Wait a minute!" cries Chuck. That was a dummy call from a burner phone—and yet the operator _still_ passed it down the line?"

"Could one of 'em be in on this?" Sarah muses.

"We wondered about that too, last time this happened," Ortega replies. "So we interrogated every 911 operator on duty. Nobody admitted receiving the hoax call…and the duty logs backed them up."

"These guys are good," says Chuck, in a tone of voice just short of admiring. "They simulated the call _and_ the response while actually bypassing them both. That could not have been easy."

"Just wait," Ortega adds. The time stamp advances to 16:25; a bright yellow circle begins to flash around the command center; and several new windows pop up on the laptop screen: each marked AMBER ALERT ACTIVATED and variously framing low-resolution images of Molly, Chuck, the repainted blue Herder, and a close-up of the license plate on the Herder.

"We're off and running in only six minutes—and no human intervention required," says the CHP officer sardonically.

Chuck studies the information stacked on the screen, already taking mental notes. "They must have hacked the weakest node...burrowed laterally across the system," he murmurs, mostly to himself.

Ortega turns to face him. "Still—somewhere in that sequence, somebody on the ground must have taken your pictures. Did you notice anyone or anything suspicious in the ice-cream shop?"

Chuck, still spellbound by the totality of the hack, doesn't respond at first. _"Hmm?_ Oh, sorry—could you repeat that?"

"Did you notice anyone or anything susp—"

"Oh! No…not that I can recall." But Chuck gives Sarah's shoulder the tiniest of little squeezes—and just as unnoticeably, she squeezes his hand in reply.

"I figured as much," says Ortega, shaking her head. "None of the other victims saw anything either. Our perps seem to be _way_ too professional to make a mistake that basic."

With that, she taps the ESC key on the laptop, closing the Google Map image and the data windows. The Amber Alert system homepage reappears on the screen. Ortega gets up from the conference table, gives Chuck and Sarah a wink, and gestures toward the door.

"I need to be on my way," she tells them. "Thank you both for hearing me out and for agreeing to help—regardless of what the FBI wants. I'll be back in contact with you as soon as I can. Please feel free to go about your regular activities…under the pretense that I was never here of course."

Chuck jumps to pull the conference-room door open for Ortega. The mingled aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, warm bread, grilled ham, and melty cheese sweep in. Just outside the door, in the adjacent break room, a carafe of coffee and a six-pack of breakfast sandwiches—with two already removed—sit invitingly on the counter.

Alex pops out from around the corner, with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, and announces, "We haven't stocked the kitchen yet. So I ran over to the _Subway®_ in the Buy More. Lieutenant…have one?"

"Thanks but no, ma'am. Smells real good but I'm in kind of a rush." Ortega offers a final, friendly sort of half-salute, half-wave…and slips out the front door.

"Good thinking, Alex," says Chuck as he looks intently into the box of sandwiches. "Now be sure you charge it to the company expense account."

Just as he reaches for a sandwich, Sarah reaches for _him_ —and grabs his shirt collar.

"Later sweetie —urgent personal conference first!"

With a firm purchase on his polo shirt and a determined expression on her face, Sarah tows her man back into the conference room, to his playful cry of _"Hii-ooooooo!",_ while Morgan and Alex titter at each other.

"A number of interpretations are possible here, you realize," Morgan says.

"Word," Alex concurs.

* * *

As soon as the door closes behind them, Sarah points excitedly to the laptop on the table: still open to the Amber Alert system ops website.

"I'm not sure you noticed—"

Chuck's jaw drops as soon as he looks at the screen. "Hel- _looo!_ She left us her username and passwords—intentionally? It _had_ to have been…!"

"That's one problem solved, isn't it?"

"Very much so. But what about this 403-g thing, babe? And did upper-case or lower-case _really_ matter? You know I was just playing along with you."

"Yes and yes. Because if the 'g' is lower-case, that probably means it's on authority of the National Security Act—and the order actually came from the CIA, not the FBI."

"Holy moly!" Chuck flops into one of the swivel chairs, and Sarah takes the one right next to him. "All these little perks coming to us from that general direction lately…the extra-hefty bounties on the ex-Fulcrum goons we captured…the new entrance to Castle…"

"And now this bizarre protective order," interjects Sarah. "Who knows if it's meant to protect _us_ …or _them?_ Typical Agency game."

"You think it's Beckman?"

"She's already denied it once—not that we should necessarily believe her. But what's her motivation? We don't work for her any more."

Chuck shrugs. "Hey, here's a wild thought. What if it's Saldana?"

"You're talking about the Saldana who threatened to call in the FBI to _lock us up?"_ counters Sarah with a gentle smile. "Anyway, she's just a midlevel agent. I doubt she has the clout."

"Makes sense. Though you can't blame me for feeling just a little paranoid about her. Not since we dug her fun little implant out of my tender flesh."

"Oh, I know—I'm still creeped out too," Sarah says, grimacing at the recollection. After a moment, she continues, "I was wondering why you didn't tell Ortega that there _was_ someone scoping you and Molly out."

"My flash ID'd that guy as CHP. Thought I'd keep that intel to myself until we're absolutely sure of where the Lieutenant stands."

"Good thinking, sweetie. What's your next move?"

"Press on, naturally. And screw that 403-g order and whatever other stuff the bastards throw at us!"

Sarah gives him a look of pride, and reaches over to caress the side of his face.

"I'm going right back down to Castle to build some new Keys," Chuck continues. "Not only does Ellie need them for her research, but I just might put one to good use myself on this new mission. The pattern suggests it'll be at least a few days before the next bogus Alert."

"Need any help?" Sarah's tone of voice suggests she wants him to say no.

"Not right now, thanks. It's gonna be a geekfest of digital design and assembling and soldering. I'll grab Morgan—he'll eat it up."

"Okay then—I'm going to go fetch Mom and Molly from home and rustle us a certain antique brass bed over in NoHo. That way you can pillow-talk me tonight all about your hard day with the soldering gun."

"Wait! It just occurred to me that I asked you if the bed was _comfortable_ —but not if it was _squeaky!"_

"Beats me. Guess we'll find out, eh?" Sarah clasps her husband's hands and shakes them up and down, out of sheer joy. "Wait'll you see—it's so elegant and classy—I'm really excited about this!"

Chuck looks at his wife in amazement. "Y'know, baby—just sayin' now—but ever since we moved, I've been noticing that your power domesticity is beginning to rival your already world-renowned badassery!"

Sarah's gaze narrows as she instantly reverts to her chill assassin persona.

"And what exactly is the _problem,_ Bartowski?" she demands—her voice suddenly low and full of menace—right before she grabs him and kisses him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck—but I can dream, can't I?

**Two days later, midafternoon, in Castle**

Carmichael Industries is in a day-long holding pattern, and Chuck is quite visibly unhappy about it.

The fruits of his and Morgan's intensive labor—five shiny new Keys—lay cushioned in anti-static bags and foam rubber, nestled in a custom-built, impact-resistant, double-locking case left open for inspection in a prominent spot on the electronics workbench to the side of the main mission room.

They're ready to be shown off to Ellie in a teleconference; but first, she has to finish attending to all of her patients… _then_ the afternoon seminar in advanced neurology she's teaching…and _then_ two hours of rounds with the residents and medical students. But it isn't just the all-day wait for Ellie that's eating at Chuck today. There's also the question of when the mystery Amber Alert hackers will strike again.

He sits in front of an open laptop at an empty table, staring into the screen and half-heartedly working a wireless mouse with his right hand, trying to finish decoding a tough encryption subroutine in the 911 dispatch system. Chuck's listlessness shows that it just isn't going to happen right now.

It doesn't help that he has to keep his left arm elevated, with a cold pack strapped to his biceps.

Morgan and Alex are mostly keeping out of their boss's direct path. Having completed their key tasks for the day hours earlier, now they pass the time adjusting and readjusting the positions of an array of monitor screens, and testing all the swivel chairs in Castle to find the ones most comfortable for long hours monitoring 911 calls and backstopping Chuck and Sarah out in the field.

Whenever something happens….

Presently, Morgan opts to break the tense silence by announcing, "I think we've got it now. The perfect setup for Operation Amber Alert. Ready whenever the evildoers are!"

"Good," is Chuck's only reply.

"Wanna have a look at it?"

"Maybe later," Chuck mumbles, still going through the motions on his own task.

Alex eyes him with sympathy. "You know Sarah didn't mean to do it."

"Of course I know that," Chuck grumbles.

"I don't know what you were thinking, buddy," Morgan chimes in. "A practice all-out _bo_ battle with her without using the Intersect? It's a wonder you weren't—"

"Shut up."

"Plenty of safer ways than _that_ to let off a little steam, if that's what you wanted."

"Shut up, Morgan. We had our reasons."

"Well, at least she bandaged it up nicely for you," Alex notes. "Does it still hurt?"

"No—of course it doesn't! It's no big deal!"

"And yet…Sarah's been mysteriously scarce around here, all afternoon," Morgan snickers.

" _Shut. Up._ That's 'cause our antique bed is finally being delivered today—nothing more."

Morgan's eyes twinkle as he moves in for the kill. "Ah! Glad to hear it, and I guess _your_ plans for the evening are set! But you'd better be extra careful. Don't want to come in tomorrow with bandages other places than just your—"

Before Morgan can complete his gibe, Chuck nails him _(clonk!)_ right in the chest with the wireless mouse.

" _Ha!"_ he crows, suddenly feeling a little better. "Who needs the Intersect?"

Not a minute too soon, Ellie's encrypted video call comes in.

" _Chuck? Are you there?"_

His sister appears on the big monitor, still dressed in her loose-fitting magenta hospital scrubs. Ellie's backdrop is a bookcase, on which all her books are stacked vertically on the shelves—as if she hasn't had any time to organize them yet.

Ellie looks harried and frazzled, but Chuck says, "Hey sis! Looking good!"

" _It's great to see you too! And you're back in Castle, I notice—so things must be getting close to normal then? How's Sarah?"_

"She's doing fine. Out taking delivery on some furniture for the new house—"

" _So you really_ did _move in there? I'm kind of surprised. Pleasantly surprised."_

"I'm glad. How's Captain Awesome?"

" _Great—he's loving it here. And Clara's so happy to have grandma on call 24-7."_ Ellie smiles, but Chuck can tell that the smile is a bit forced.

"Sounds good. But what about you, sis?"

She shrugs and says, _"Okay, I guess,"_ then folds her arms in tightly over her chest and pretends to shiver. _"It's cold though. I'm still not used to it."_

"Too bad we can't ship you a little California sunshine."

" _You and Sarah coming to visit us for a while would do for that. I miss you! I thought you'd have already been here by now. You promised to bring her, remember?"_

"I know—I know, sis. And I miss you too. Just didn't want to arrive empty-handed."

Chuck looks over his shoulder at Morgan and silently stabs a finger in the direction of the box of Keys on the workbench. Morgan hops up from his seat, grabs the box, and carries it into Ellie's field of view.

"Ta-daaa!" Morgan cries, extending the box out in front of him. "Hi, Ellie!"

" _Hello, Morgan…and Alex too—I assume she's there somew—Hey,_ wow! _You made_ five _of 'em?"_

At the sight of the Keys, Ellie's demeanor brightens on the spot.

" _That's fantastic, Chuck. Wonderful! And thanks to your generous funding, my new neuroengineering lab is almost completely set up. I'm_ sooo _anxious to get started…how soon can I have those Keys?"_

"Just a few more days, I think," Chuck replies with a sly grin. "We've got to finish up a little project here first….but right after that, Sarah and I are planning to take a road trip!"

* * *

**Very late that night, at Chuck and Sarah's home**

_(Music: "Turn Me On," by Nina Simone_ )

Chuck plods slowly and wearily up the stairs, and into the darkened master bedroom. His jeans are rumpled, his shirt is untucked, and his left arm is still bandaged. A heavily augmented iPad of his own custom design, cradled under his right arm, is running through one last set of complex calculations for him.

" _Well…it's about time,"_ comes the soft, sultry purr of his wife, waiting in the dark.

Sarah switches on a bedside lamp. She's sitting up in the middle of the queen-sized antique brass bed, atop the covers and propped against a flock of puffy pillows, smiling expectantly. She has on a pretty, frilly—but very long and _very_ opaque—lavender nightgown.

Still, Sarah's tone and demeanor make it abundantly obvious to Chuck that her demure bedclothes aren't a true measure of her present mood.

"I'm sorry I couldn't dress better for the occasion, sweetie," she murmurs foxily—and punctuates that with a showy wink. "But you know…" She tilts her head toward the hallway and the adjacent guest room where Emma and Molly are sleeping—a bit too close at hand to allow for wild naked abandon.

Chuck comes to the foot of the bed, and in spite of his fatigue, he grins and sighs with deep delight at the sight of his alluring, loving Sarah.

"You're so quiet," she says. "Tired and bruised, poor thing." Then she notices the iPad he's still carrying, and points at it with pretend annoyance. "You weren't planning to bring _that_ to bed, were you?"

" _Hmmm?"_ Chuck reacts as if he'd forgotten he was carrying it. "No…no, of course not, babe. Guess I've been a little obsessed lately, huh?" He sets the device atop his dresser and shuts it down.

"I can tell you're worried," says Sarah.

"Yeah. The deeper I dig, the better and better these mystery hackers seem to be. They're dangerous—and I'm afraid I might not be ready when they strike next."

"They're the ones who should be worried, with my brilliant sexy nerd hunting them." Sarah winks at him again, and makes a playful come-hither gesture with her forefinger. Chuck gently sits down on the edge of the bed.

"The mattress sure feels nice," he discovers.

"Ohhh yes—and there's something even _better_ to show you," Sarah whispers excitedly. "Check _this_ out!" She arches backwards and seizes the brass headboard with both hands, then wriggles her entire body up and down and to and fro. The bed barely moves, and makes no noise at all.

"Wow," Chuck says, reaching over to tap on the headboard. "So it's a lot more solid and heavier than it looks!"

Sarah beams with pride. "It is! The movers had to take it almost all the way apart, just so they could carry it up the stairs. Then, put it together again. This beauty was definitely built to last—just like us. Now _c'mere, you!"_ She yanks on his shirt.

Chuck swings his feet—still in their ink-black Chucks—up onto the bed and rolls over to cuddle up against her. Sarah leans over him, deliberately resting her breasts on his face as she reaches across to loosen the bandage on his left biceps, and inspect the palm-sized bruise she'd accidently inflicted on him in Castle earlier that day.

"Oh sweetie, you know I feel so bad about this," she coos. "Does it hurt much?"

"Terribly…" is Chuck's muffled reply.

Sarah giggles, unwraps the bandage the rest of the way, and starts gingerly kissing his arm in a circle around the bruise. Chuck, maintaining his position, returns the favor—until his wife shuts her eyes and draws a sharp breath through her teeth.

"We've gotta be just as quiet as this bed," she moans in his ear. "Won't be easy."

* * *

**Next day, late afternoon, at the top of the Hollywood Hills**

Standing in the warm sun alongside of his blue ex-Herder, parked just off fabled Mulholland Drive at a roadside viewpoint called Dead Man's Overlook, Chuck squints toward the northeast through smog that's unusually light for the season, trying to pinpoint his and Sarah's new neighborhood somewhere down below, at the base of the north slope of the Hills.

Though Chuck is enjoying the weather and the wide panorama of the metro area, he wears a serious, almost tense expression beneath his reflective sunglasses, and he is keeping close track of the time. Precisely at 4 p.m., he takes a micro earpiece out of his pocket and inserts it into his right ear, then reaches back into his car and grabs his phone and his souped-up iPad.

A white California Highway Patrol cruiser approaches from the east. Chuck smiles mischievously, steps out to the curb, and holds out his thumb. The CHP vehicle glides up next to him. Lieutenant Ortega is driving. She rolls the right front window down, leans across the seat, and lowers her own aviator sunglasses to speak to him.

"Hitchhiking on county roads is strictly prohibited, sir. You'll have to come with me."

Chuck reaches for the front passenger door handle—then stops short when he recalls that instead of a shotgun seat, the right front quadrant of the car interior would be fully taken up by communications equipment, computers, and high-resolution display screens.

Ortega gives him a rueful look.

"I'm really sorry—but there's only room in the back. Just like your last ride."

His iPad under his arm, Chuck slips gamely into the back seat—normally used to carry prisoners and surrounded cage-like on all sides with metal gratings and thick plexiglass. Ortega pulls back onto Mulholland Drive and continues heading west, weaving among the wooded ridge crests.

"The ambience is familiar," Chuck jests. "Still can't say it's all that stylish."

"I apologize. And the fact is—I'm actually kind of uncomfortable myself. I'm a motorcycle cop and I hate having to work on four wheels. But we can't talk on a bike, of course, so here we are. What have you got to show me?"

Chuck holds the tablet up so she can see the CHP logo on the screen from her rear-view mirror.

"Since you were thoughtful enough to let us…um… _borrow_ your login, we used that to tap into all the dispatch networks. So now we can surreptitiously monitor all CHP radio, wireless, and net traffic. Yesterday we started listening in, both morning and evening rush hour. Next bogus Amber Alert that gets activated—we'll know it right when you do."

"That sounds good," replies Ortega with a nod, as she mindfully steers the police cruiser through the endless hairpins and twists of the scenic hilltop drive. "But what happens then?"

"Two things—and here's hoping we can pull 'em _both_ off." Chuck holds up his right hand with fingers crossed. "My assistants built a database of all the high-value robbery targets in the L.A. basin. If there's a bogus Alert, they can quickly run a list of the statistically most likely hits, based on proximity and traffic, and flash that intel straight to you."

"Giving us a better shot at intercepting the actual crime in progress. I like that."

"Yeah, though that's the easy part. At the same time—ideally while the attack's in progress or the trail's at least warm—I'll be trying to trace our malicious hacker back to a locatable IP address. The odds of _that_ are much, much longer because our perp probably spoofs the source field and uses zombie machines to—"

Ortega chuckles and shakes her head. "How's that in English?"

"Sorry. Like mailing a package from a fake address to start, then shipping it through a chain of intermediaries who never know where it originated or where it ends up. It's a challenge to trace, to put it mildly."

"Wow," says Ortega in awe. "So _that's_ why we're paying you the big bucks."

Chuck puts the laptop down on the seat beside him, yawns, and stretches. "All I can say, Drea— _heh, heh_ —is that you're just lucky I'm not charging you by the hour!"

* * *

Four miles farther west on Mulholland Drive, where it meets the busy twelve-lane I-405 freeway at Sepulveda Pass, Sarah sits in her Lotus on the shoulder, listening in on Chuck's conversation with Lt. Ortega and tracking their movement using the GPS in her husband's iPhone. Just in case.

Sarah wrinkles her nose at the rising stench of gas and diesel exhaust, from the traffic that is just now beginning to clot in the concrete artery below her. Rush hour—more like two or three hours, really—is underway.

A few minutes on, Sarah hears the throb of an approaching helicopter, a few decibels above the grumbling, honking traffic on the 405. The pilot in her can't resist leaning out of the car window to watch it pass overhead.

It arrives from the south, flying on course with the median strip of the freeway, no more than a few hundred feet above the ground. The garish black-and-yellow chevron stripes on the fuselage and the oversized camera package suspended underneath mark it as the Southland Network News chopper, with L.A.'s most popular drive-time traffic reporter for as long as anyone can remember….

"What's new, Sy in the Sky?" Sarah says to herself, as the helicopter _thwhooshes_ over Sepulveda Pass. But then…it unexpectedly veers into a banked turn to the southwest, leaving the freeway and bearing on the suburbs of Brentwood and Santa Monica. Surprised by the maneuver, Sarah reaches for her iPhone to see if any major accidents had been reported in that vicinity.

* * *

Her briefing now complete, Lt. Ortega slows her cruiser for a U-turn at the upcoming intersection of Mulholland and Beverly Glen Boulevard, on the outskirts of the ritzy hillside enclaves of Bel Air.

"I'll take you back to your car now. And Chuck," she says earnestly, "thank you for all that you and your team are doing for us. It won't go unappreciated—I promise—no matter what the FBI wants."

Chuck doesn't answer her. Ortega checks on him in the rear-view mirror. He's staring at his iPad with eyes wide, suddenly looking very pale and nervous.

"Chuck? Hey, what's happening?"

"I'm not sure," he replies after a few more seconds, "but I don't think it's good."

He turns the iPad around again for her to see. There's a new system message window superimposed on the CHP login page, and it reads

HI, CHIPS! READY OR NOT

_(Music: first 0:10 of "The Dark Side," from the "Chuck" soundtrack by Tim Jones)_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck, but I'd put up some money on Kickstarter to help fund a Chuck movie without hesitation…if the opportunity ever arose.

* * *

"What's it say?" asks Lt. Ortega as Chuck holds up the iPad with the mysterious message.

"'Hi CHiPs—ready or not'!"

Ortega mouths a silent _"Huh?"_ —then asks "Who sent that?"

Chuck drops the iPad back to his lap and starts typing energetically. "No idea. Someone who thinks I'm with CHP, maybe 'cause I've been using your login to—"

Before he can finish the sentence, Chuck winces and seizes his right ear. Morgan is shouting in his earpiece:

 _("Chuck—buddy!—we've been monitoring 911 and they just_ now _forwarded an Amber Alert request to the command center—meta says it's outta Santa Monica….")_

At the same instant, Ortega's display screens suddenly flare up with text messages, and her radio crackles with a barrage of terse coded calls.

"Okay, Morgan—stand by to run the search routine…Sarah, d'you copy all that?"

_("Roger that, Chuck. Ready to roll—waiting for target.")_

Chuck looks up at Ortega, who has just swung the cruiser sharply left from Mulholland Drive onto Beverly Glen Boulevard—downhill toward the city—and switched on the flashing lights and siren.

_(Music: "Before Your Very Eyes…," by Atoms For Peace)_

"Guess you heard it too?" Chuck asks her.

"Uh huh." Ortega points at the texts still scrolling across her monitor screens. "Report of some crazy uncle just snatched twin boys from a birthday party at a Cheezy Chaz. You think it's bogus?"

"Probably—and we'll know in a second. Alex, is there audio on the 911 call?"

_("Umm…checking on it now…That's a negative. No recording, no operator log.")_

"Okay then—Morgan—run the search pattern _now!"_

Ortega nods toward the display screens again. "I'm online, Chuck. Can you put it up here where I can see it?"

"Absolutely." Chuck activates a custom app on his iPhone and points it forward at the cluster of monitors. A satellite map appears on the biggest screen, and on that a flashing dot marking the location of the Cheezy Chaz on the eastern edge of Santa Monica. Then, more than two dozen bright yellow circles pop up all around it: signifying jewelry stores, precious-metal dealers, banks, and the like.

" _¡Caray!"_ Ortega exclaims _._ "That's a lot of targets! The rich side of town."

"See if any of 'em pulls a burglar alarm," Chuck replies distractedly, his nose to his iPad screen. "But you have to take it from here, Drea—I'm already on the trail of whoever started this."

"Ten-four, Chuck. Think we'll stick to the surface streets 'cause the freeways are pretty much all tied up. Not hard to see why our perps like to work rush hour."

The CHP cruiser flies out of a narrow ravine at the base of the Hills. Ortega cranks the wheel, and they turn west on Sunset Boulevard into Westwood, just two municipalities away from Santa Monica. While speaking softly into a transceiver microphone tacked to her uniform shirt, she pumps her siren—and four lanes of traffic ahead of them obediently part to the sides. She floors it.

Likewise, sitting behind her, Chuck flashes—and with the Intersect activated, his computing skills instantly double in speed. Eyes locked onto his iPad screen, he maneuvers through code, backtracking from the command center to the 911 dispatcher and out into open cyberspace, playing digital tag with the unseen hackers.

Almost subconsciously, he thinks of Sarah, and taps his earpiece.

"Babe, where're you at?"

_("Heading south to intercept. Down the frontage road along the 405—it's a little bit faster right now.")_

"Good," says Chuck, as his cruiser zooms past the UCLA campus: Ellie and Devon's alma mater.

He flinches when Ortega abruptly calls out, "Whoomp— _there it is!"_ Her monitor is _pinging_ and one of the solid yellow circles on the satellite map has changed to flashing orange. "Armed robbery—auction house in Brentwood—that's _really_ close!"

She leans over to read the new intel popping up on the screen. "They made off with a safe full of rare antique jewelry in a brown Toyota FJ Cruiser. Stolen of course. Spotted heading north and— _well holy hell,_ is this our lucky day or what? We just stay on Sunset and we'll run right into 'em!"

"That's…great." Chuck is sweating and his head is throbbing from tension. His wi-fi link is beginning to waver, as their route brings them back toward the hills. And then—on top of everything else—Morgan cuts in.

_("Hey Chuck—this look familiar?")_

A small video window opens unbidden on Chuck's iPad, drawing off some of his concentration. It's a live TV news broadcast on SNN, showing a phalanx of CHP cruisers, their red-and-blue lights pulsing, chasing a hapless Honda Civic on the Santa Monica Freeway.

"Not _now,_ Morgan!" Chuck angrily waves his iPhone like a wand, and the SNN broadcast bounces up front to one of Ortega's unused video monitors. The CHP officer immediately groans.

"Geez—Sy in the Sky again? _¡Qué cabrón!_ The SOB must have a sixth sense, or— _heh!—_ better comms than we do, at least. Well lemme fix _his_ wagon! I think it's safe to call off this particular Amber Alert…." She starts talking into her transceiver mike once again.

No more than twenty seconds later, the live broadcast shows the CHP cars slowing down and turning off their flashing lights. Then it cuts away to a commercial.

"Ha- _haah!_ I'm rerouting all those other cruisers in our direction. They're going to set up a roadblock to the west and then—"

" _Nooo!"_ hollers Chuck. "No, no, no…no!"

"Say what?" Then Ortega realizes that he's shouting at his iPad, not at her.

His screen has just gone solid black, except for the words

STICK TO PARKING METERS, COPPERS

CUZ YOU SURE SUCK AT THIS!

Then the screen winks out completely, the wi-fi dies, and the hard drive grinds off, accompanied by a hint of burned plastic. Just like that, Chuck's amped-up iPad is toast. In a near-daze, he sets the ruined device down on the seat beside him.

Sarah overheard him, and she's already calling.

_("Sweetie—you all right? What happened?")_

"Yeah babe, I'm okay…thanks. Lost my trace though. Stand by."

Chuck looks blankly at Ortega and murmurs, "Just got burned. I lost the link… _and_ my computer along with it."

"Crap happens," the policewoman replies with a shrug. "We'll still nab us some armed robbers. We should be gaining on that brown FJ—unless it gets snagged at a roadblock first!"

Ortega and Chuck zip across the 405 freeway overpass and into Brentwood, where Sunset Boulevard narrows and winds snakelike among a denser maze of residential streets. No longer able to hunt the hackers, Chuck sits up and starts paying closer attention to their surroundings and to the data on Ortega's monitors, thinking he might glean something useful from the intel. He hears the faint whirring of a helicopter somewhere in the distance, and by leaning back to peer up and out the rear window, he sees the yellow-and-black SNN traffic copter hovering not far from the scene.

"Sy's on _our_ trail now," he notes. "Wonder why SNN's not televising this chase."

"Maybe 'cause it's really not much of a chase," Ortega suggests. "The bad guys are about to run into a dragnet stretched across all the main streets through Brentwood. We just have to hang back here on Sunset in case they try to turn around."

She checks her watch. "Everything should be in place by now. No escape—and I'm sure ol' Sy will be right on top of it when we nail those bastards!"

But after a moment, she gestures toward the live SNN broadcast on her monitor and muses, "Still…it does seem like they're running a lot of commercials all of a sudden."

They rush on, deeper into Brentwood, following the curving road to the south and then north across a narrow, heavily wooded canyon. Even though all the windows in the cruiser are closed, Chuck can smell a trace of sea air—they're getting close to the coast.

"Coming up on the first roadblock," Ortega says excitedly. "This could be it."

They take a tight turn at 65 miles per hour as Sunset Boulevard curves back southward on the other side of the small canyon. A row of CHP cruisers blocks the path just ahead. Several beefy patrolmen stand among them, holding big rifles. Ortega slows to a smooth stop and rolls down her window.

"What's happening?" she asks the nearest patrolman. "Where's that stolen FJ Cruiser?"

"I was just gonna ask _you_ the same thing, Lieutenant," the man replies, switching his rifle to one hand and scratching his head with the other. "Never saw 'em!"

" _Whaaat?"_ Without waiting for a response, Ortega starts chattering on her mike again while also carefully checking the latest texts on her main monitor screen. Then she furiously slams her hand on the dashboard, and turns to Chuck.

"I! Can't! _Believe!_ This! They slipped through! They freakin' slipped right past us—even with barricades on _every major_ surface street leading through town!"

"Must've taken to the back streets," Chuck says, a bit timidly.

The policewoman shakes her head. "Hard to see how—most of 'em are either dead ends or just bring you right back to the main roads. Either they know these neighborhoods _reeaall_ well…or they had some kinda eyes on us."

"Now there's an interesting thought," mutters Chuck as he picks up his useless iPad and gives it a mournful look. Then he taps his earpiece.

"Morgan…Alex…you all copied that, I assume? Any of you see anything? Morgan—check the Caltrans westside traffic cams, buddy—"

* * *

**In the control center at Castle**

"Already thought of that," Morgan smartly replies. "Looking at 'em right now."

He has the live feed from the fixed traffic cameras at every intersection west of the 405 queued up, and he and Alex are looping through them four at a time on the big monitor, searching for any sign of the elusive brown FJ Cruiser. They scan twelve camera feeds…sixteen…twenty…but find nothing.

"Shouldn't CHP have a chopper there by now?" Morgan asks Alex.

"One's on its way—just heard it from the dispatcher." She points to another screen, which shows a video feed from an aircraft flying north over what appears to be Palos Verdes. "Must've been on another assignment way down south. For the moment at least, SNN's got the only eyes up there."

"Wish they'd quit with the damn commercial break and get back to reality TV," groans Morgan.

Twenty-four camera feeds…twenty-eight…and then—

" _Aha!"_ yells Alex, rising partway out of her chair and pointing at one of the feeds. "There it is—Sunset at Woodburn—heading south. Six minutes ago."

 _("Good but that's like ages ago,"_ Chuck answers _. "See anything after that?")_

Thirty-two…thirty-six…forty…

"No…nothing, buddy. Sorry."

Alex chuckles, tugs at his sleeve, and points to a new announcement on screen.

"Congrats though," Morgan continues. "You got all the freeways and streets on the west side so messed up that CHP just called a Sigalert on top of the Amber Alert!"

* * *

**Back at the failed roadblock in Brentwood**

"It's okay, Chuck," says Ortega. "We'll just recast the net a little wider. They can't get too far—we're just a mile from the coast, so the only way out is back the way they came."

As she talks, Chuck stares out the right-side window of the cruiser, toward the southwest. Just a few blocks away, he sees the far wall of another canyon, running parallel to the one they'd just crossed. But this one is much wider, and it seems to lead due south— _straight down to…_

"Hey Drea." He raps on the plexiglas partition to get Ortega's attention, and points in the direction where he'd just been looking. "That's Potrero Canyon over there, isn't it? That leads down to the beach at Pacific Palisades—right?"

She looks at Chuck—bemused for about half a second—then her eyes widen in realization. She yanks the transmission into reverse, spins the vehicle around, and peels away from the roadblock and her astonished colleagues.

" _¡Caray!_ You're right Chuck—they slipped past us 'cause they went _off-road!_ They must've snuck into that canyon and four-wheeled it down to the beach!"

"—And they're gonna take that safe out in a _boat_ …?" interjects Chuck.

"Yeah—but maybe we can still catch 'em before they do!"

Chuck's shoulder and lap belts bite deeply into him, saving him from pinballing around in the back of the cruiser as Ortega drives like a policewoman possessed—careening headlong toward the nearby Pacific beachfront, while shouting into her transceiver for backup.

"Dammit!" she growls. "Dispatch already sent all the units eastbound, thinking they went _that_ way! We're on our own for at least five or ten minutes, Chuck…."

"S—S—Sarah…? W—we're headed f—for the beach at Potrero—mouth of Potrero—"

_("Roger that. I'm right behind you, sweetie. Real close. Hang on!")_

* * *

Their vehicle hurtles down to the coastline. Chuck holds his breath as they shriek across the Pacific Coast Highway without slowing down—then sighs gratefully when he sees that Ortega's siren carried far enough to hold the cross traffic back in both directions!

Roaring into the packed shoreside parking lot, they swerve past startled beachgoers, who had just been looking incredulously at the brown FJ Cruiser way out across the sand, almost in the breaking surf. Two men have the back of the vehicle open and are strong-arming a heavy safe down onto a canvas travois. A blue Zodiac boat, barely discernible against the sea and sky, bounces over the swells about a half-mile offshore, coming fast in their direction.

The CHP cruiser has neither the ground clearance nor the four-wheel drive nor the big tires that the brown SUV does.

" _Totally_ wish I was on my bike right now," shouts a grinning Lt. Ortega. "Hang on, Chuck!" She slams the accelerator. Their car bounds over the curb at the edge of the parking lot, and leaps about eighty feet across the sand, in the tire tracks of the FJ Cruiser, before its wheels bog down and it slams to a violent halt.

The sunbathers in the vicinity, who had already retreated some distance away after the criminals drove onto the scene, now move even farther into the background.

Startled, the two robbers drop the safe on the canvas, pull out automatic pistols, and fall prone on the beach, burrowing into the sand and taking aim at the CHP vehicle. Ortega already has her own Smith & Wesson 4006 at the ready.

"Keep your head down!" she yells at Chuck over her shoulder. "Stay in the car!"

" _That_ never works out very well," he retorts.

Ortega either doesn't hear him, or just ignores him, and instead switches on her loudspeaker.

" _Drop your weapons! Stand with your hands above your head, both of you!"_

She lowers her side window, swings her car door wide open, and crouches behind it. The beach patrons flee, screaming, for the relative safety of the parking lot.

Instead of surrendering, the robbers begin shooting at the CHP cruiser. _(KRAK-zingg! KRAK-pwinngg! KRAK-punnk!)_ One bullet strikes the windshield and makes a star-shaped impact pattern in the shatterproof glass, and another embeds itself in Ortega's car-door shield.

"Suit yourselves," the CHP officer says—quite at ease—then takes aim over the top of her door and _(KRAK!)_ hits one of the robbers in the shoulder. He flips over backward in a big spray of beach sand and lies there, whining and clutching at his wound. His partner cusses and keeps firing—but now he looks concerned, and his shots are mostly off the mark _(KRAK-thwizz! KRAK-zzinng!)._

Ortega waits him out. After a little while, he stops shooting, and peeks over his little berm of sand. _(KRAK!)_ The policewoman buries a bullet immediately in front of his face, kicking up a cloud of grit that blinds him. Then _(KRAK!)_ another in his shooting arm, and he's out of the game as well.

Still in the back seat of the cruiser, Chuck whistles loudly in relief.

Cautiously, Ortega rises from behind the car door, still with her pistol extended, and slogs through the sand toward the FJ Cruiser. Chuck opens his door and steps out of the vehicle, so he can better see the two downed robbers and watch them for any surprise moves.

Then—without warning or any sound at all—Ortega staggers backward, drops her gun to grab at her abdomen, twists partway around, and slumps down onto her side. From several yards away, Chuck can already see blood spreading across the front of her uniform.

Just beyond the breaking waves, still hundreds of yards off, the Zodiac boat has stopped. On board, a man is standing and holding a sniper rifle. He starts his engine again.

" _Ohmigod…oh no, no!"_ cries Chuck.

Ortega is trying to crawl back toward him. _"Stay…in…the damn…car!"_ she manages to get out—before she falls still.

In desperation, Chuck lunges into the front seat of the cruiser, hoping to find a first-aid kit—which he does. He slips it under his arm and plods to the side of the stricken policewoman, his black Chucks sinking deeply into the loose sand, keeping one eye on the gunman who is already bringing his boat onto the beach.

Ortega is bleeding uncontrollably from the ugly jagged gash of a bad wound just below her chest on the right side. The sand greedily soaks up her blood as quickly as it pours out. Her breathing is labored and raspy, and she gapes up at Chuck with dazed, juddering eyes.

" _Ch…Chu…j-jeez, I'm…I'm…"_

"Hush, Drea—you're gonna be okay." In his haste, Chuck all but rips the lid off the first-aid kit. He takes a fistful of thick gauze bandages and presses them down as firmly as he can onto Ortega's wound. She moans faintly and loses consciousness, but the bleeding abates somewhat.

" _Sarah…Morgan!"_ he shouts, almost in tears. "Somebody copy—please! Call 911—Ortega's shot bad—shooter's coming for us! We're on the beach below Potrero Canyon—track my cell for the location—please copy…."

He hears what he thinks is a response from Morgan in his earpiece, but it's badly garbled by static.

The gunman from the Zodiac boat walks up the beach toward them. He has on a grey wetsuit that covers everything except his bald head. He's tall and gangling, with oversized hands. He's laughing at Chuck and Ortega and carrying his rifle rather casually in one hand—obviously aware that he can fire again at will.

Chuck looks wildly all around him. Ortega's weapon lies just out of his reach. The steady pressure he's applying to her wound is the only thing keeping her from bleeding out in a matter of minutes. He looks defiantly up at her assailant, who is coming steadily closer.

The gunman stops a stride or two away from them, sneers, and methodically raises his rifle once more. Out of alternatives, Chuck prepares himself to flash and draw on his Intersect skills to dive for Ortega's gun—

—but just before he does _—(KRAK!)—_ a round red spot appears smack dab in the middle of the gunman's forehead. The man's eyes roll upward in their sockets, his arms splay, and he crashes forward on top of his rifle—dead before he hits the sand.

Chuck turns in the direction from where the shot came, and sees Sarah sprinting toward him with her pistol in hand. Her hair is streaming and her beautiful face is strained with fear and worry, until she gets close enough to be sure that her husband isn't injured.

"Babe…oh babe, thank God, you…." Chuck blubbers when she reaches him.

Momentarily too winded to reply, Sarah drops to her knees by his side, slips an arm around him, and rests her head on his shoulder, panting. Chuck affectionately nudges her cheek with his as he holds the gauze bandages down on Ortega's wound. Sarah can only look on in abject horror at the CHP officer's fearfully wan and fading countenance, and Chuck's blood-drenched clothing.

Neither of them notices how gorgeously colorful the western sky has become, out over the wide Pacific Ocean, as the sun descends toward the horizon.

"This is bad," Chuck mutters. "Where the _hell_ is that backup?"

Other than the terrified beach patrons encircling them at a distance, their only witness is the SNN traffic helicopter, hovering not very far off.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I do not own Chuck and hereby express my sincere appreciation for the permission from TPTB to write Chuck fan fiction after the fact.

**Late evening, outside the trauma unit at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center in Westwood**

Chuck emerges from a lavatory near the double-door entrance to the emergency room, refreshed after washing up and changing into clean clothes, and returns to the adjacent waiting area. Sarah and Emma are the only two people there, seated on couches facing each other across the narrow corridor-like room. At the far end, a flat-panel TV with the sound turned down is showing a news video of the severely wounded Lieutenant Ortega being lifted into an air ambulance, and hustled away from the crime scene on the beach.

Sarah's face brightens at the sight of her husband returning—but Emma is reserved, and visibly concerned about something. Chuck sits down next to Sarah, who takes his hand in both of hers and holds it in her lap.

"Thanks again for bringing me some clothes, Emma," he says. "Sorry we made you rush over—I hope Molly didn't get upset."

Emma chuckles, in spite of her outward mood. "Oh, Molly was perfectly happy to stay and play video games with her Uncle Morgan. And _this_ wouldn't be a good place for her, especially not so soon after her trip to the police station."

"I'm sorry _you_ had to see this, Mom…." Sarah says, picking up on her mother's discomfort.

"Me too," Emma softly rejoins. "And I'll admit…I _am_ worried."

"Ortega'll make it," Chuck pipes up. "This is a world-class trauma center. Y'know, Ellie and Devon trained here before they got their positions at Westside Medical."

Emma shakes her head. "I hope so, Chuck…but that's not what I'm talking about…."

"Ohh," he replies—while Sarah just stares at the floor, as her mother goes on:

"…I probably couldn't begin to imagine the things you must have seen and done, when you were working for the CIA. So _this_ "—she points to the TV screen—"is probably typical for the two of you. Except…"

She pauses to consider her next words carefully.

"Except…?" asks Chuck.

"Except that when _you_ …Sarah…came back into my life not that long ago, all you could talk about—then—was how you and Chuck were going to settle down. How you'd find a safer line of work…and start your own family."

Sarah and Chuck look wistfully at each other but offer no response.

"Well, anyway…I've said my piece." Abruptly, Emma stands and reaches over to tap them both on their shoulders. They look up again. She's smiling at them now.

"I'm always so happy to see the both of you together…and so in love," she tells them—with a barely noticeable, emotional catch in her voice. "Whatever you decide to do…promise me you'll always cherish each other."

She takes a step toward the hallway. Sarah quickly gets up, and Chuck does the same a second later.

"Wait—where are you going, Mom?"

"Sweetheart, I need to take Molly home tonight, before it gets too late. Spring break is nearly over. She's back to kindergarten the day after tomorrow."

Sarah embraces her mother. "Thank you for spending this time with us."

"It was special for me too, dear," Emma says, as they keep holding onto each other. "Don't worry…we'll be back. Or even better—you and your handsome man should drive up _our_ way some time soon. Come for dinner perhaps."

They reluctantly let go; then Emma turns to give Chuck a hug, and departs. Sarah stands there in the middle of the waiting room, moist-eyed and feeling strangely perplexed. Chuck reaches out to hold her close, and kisses the top of her head.

"I _do_ cherish you so very much," Sarah murmurs, leaning against his chest. "I love you."

"And I love you too, baby. You tired?"

"Mm-hmm. Hungry too. Let's get a quick bite…then go home, drop all our clothes on the floor, and cuddle under the covers all night."

"Sounds totally like a plan."

Together they walk out of the waiting area into the busy ER hallway—bustling with harried-looking doctors, nurses, and orderlies in UCLA powder-blue scrubs—then startle when the double doors _slam_ open behind them, and a male voice calls out, loudly enough to be heard over all the ambient noises:

"Mr. and Ms. Bartowski—a moment please?"

The man is tall and broad-shouldered, with military-short blonde hair, wearing a dark-grey jacket, loosened navy tie...and an earpiece. So this is no hospital staffer. He fixes a stern glare on them—but Chuck and Sarah can already see that his eyes are red and faintly moist. The mysterious man ushers them right back into the waiting area. Once there, he makes no attempt to shake hands, but instead throws out an FBI badge.

"I'm Senior Special Agent Tomas Mazowiecki. I've been waiting to speak with you alone."

"Have you been in to see her?" Chuck asks. "How's she doing?"

"Still fighting, Mr. Bartowski. Still fighting. If she…if she survives, I suppose she'll have you to thank. But…you shouldn't have been there in the first place, meddling in an—"

"What do you mean, meddling?" demands Sarah.

"I'm not here to explain anything," the FBI agent brusquely replies. "I'm here to inform you that you are both done with this case. _Done,_ Mr. and Ms. Bartowski. You no longer have access to Lt. Ortega's CHP user accounts—and I would strongly advise you not to try and go back in by any clandestine means. Because we'll be watching for you."

"We proved the link between the Amber Alerts and the high-value robberies," Chuck retorts indignantly. "We saved the loot, _and_ nabbed you your first two suspects—both reasonably intact for questioning. If that's how you define meddling, Mr. Mazowiecki…"

The FBI agent's face reddens further. "Yeah, and you _also_ helped get Drea—I mean Lieutenant Ortega—shot and in grave danger—"

"Not true—and that's _way_ out of line!" Sarah fires back at him. Chuck gently grasps his wife's arm to calm her, then turns to respond to Mazowiecki:

"Okay, we underestimated them. I'll give you that. But with what we learned, next time will be different."

"There's nothing _you_ could have learned that _we_ don't already know. And I guess you didn't hear me clearly when I said you're done."

"I think you can still use our help," insists Chuck.

"No," replies Mazowiecki firmly. "Listen, Bartowski. I've heard all about your past histories. Both of you. We've got a big file."

" _And_ a 403-g order," Sarah interjects.

"If that was meant to surprise me, Mrs. Bartowski, it didn't—I assumed Lt. Ortega would tell you. Doesn't matter. All that order means is that you get to walk, rather than getting locked up as a coupla vigilantes. Which is what I'd much rather see happen."

Chuck turns to Sarah and shrugs. "I give up. Casey was right about these guys." He takes her arm and starts leading her away from the unpleasant FBI agent.

" _It was your choice to get out of the game!"_ Mazowiecki shouts after them. _"You can't have it both ways!"_

* * *

**Forty minutes later, in the Lotus, homeward bound on the freeway**

As Sarah drives, the staccato glints from the highway lamps overhead reveal her expression to be taut and preoccupied. She works the steering wheel with her left hand, so she can hold Chuck's hand with her right.

"Hard not to notice," Chuck begins, "that you've been hanging on to me more or less continuously since you took out that baddie on the beach."

A second later, he adds, "Not that I have a problem with that."

Sarah only smiles and grips him a little tighter. A few miles farther along, Chuck tries to make conversation again.

"Penny for your thoughts," says Chuck. "FBI?...Ortega?...Your mom?"

"Oh— _damn!"_ she blurts out.

"Huh?"

"Your car, actually. I just now remembered we left the blue Herder parked up there at the overlook."

"Oh boy—that's right! It was a two-hour limit…I guess my poor Herder's been towed away by now."

"I'm so sorry, sweetie." Sarah briefly takes her eyes off the road to flash her husband a reassuring glance. "I promise I'll help you track it down tomorrow."

"Thank you, baby."

"And before that," she continues, "it _was_ Mom. I suppose I ought to be focusing on the case—but I keep on going back to what she said about us…."

"Thought it might be that." He slips his hand over hers and begins to caress it.

"Chuck… _I_ was the one who really wanted us to leave the CIA…wasn't I?"

"Yes, you were. But I agreed with you."

"Well we did it—and it hasn't made our lives a hell of a lot safer," Sarah reflects. "So far anyway."

"Old habits," comments Chuck, with a low chortle. "We've said it before, babe: maybe you and I just don't _do_ normal."

"Now _that's_ a really sobering thought."

Right on cue, a CHP cruiser eases up behind them, its blue and red lights pulsing.

"I wasn't speeding, so I assume somebody else has a message to deliver," Sarah notes calmly. She stops the Lotus on the shoulder directly below one of the overhead lamps, and the CHP vehicle follows suit.

A solitary male trooper emerges and strides briskly toward Sarah's open window. Chuck studies him in the rear-view mirror—and, at the same instant that the officer draws close enough for Sarah to read his nameplate—he recognizes the man.

" _Carelli!"_ growls Chuck. His fists clench, and he has to briefly shut his eyes to keep himself from flashing involuntarily.

"Looking for more innocent motorists to rough up, Officer?" Sarah asks Carelli frostily as he comes up to the Lotus.

But the CHP officer, big and thick-armed, looks thoroughly abashed—almost humiliated—and he shakes his head.

"I had that coming…if not worse," he mutters, to Chuck and Sarah's surprise. "I owe you an apology, sir. An' I didn't stop you to hassle you. Mostly I wanted to say thanks—from the bottom of my heart—for all you did to help Lieutenant Ortega. You likely saved her life. An' everyone in the CHP feels the same way."

Chuck nods, grimly. "Apology accepted. And of course we hope she pulls through."

"I think she will," Carelli says with a sparing grin. "She's one tough, tough chica. An' the other thing I wanted to tell you is that _if_ you decided you wanted to stay on this case…if you did, the CHP's got your back. An' _screw_ the frickin' FBI!"

"We…appreciate that, Officer Carelli," Sarah replies.

"I know the Bureau hasn't been very forthcoming with your agency," adds Chuck. "And now we're back to square one, unfortunately."

"Roger that, sir. But maybe it'd help ya some to know the FBI's planning some kind of sting operation. That's what we're hearing. They deduced this Amber Alert business is a scam for hire, so they've gone undercover to set up a fake robbery an' try luring 'em out of the shadows."

"Good luck to them," Chuck says sarcastically. "That's no way to nail the hacker or hackers at the core of this gang."

"Do they think Sy in the Sky from SNN is involved somehow?" Sarah asks Carelli.

The CHP officer scratches his jaw. "Hmm. Really good question, ma'am. Haven't heard mention of that as of yet. But it _is_ kinda funny how he's Johnny-on-the-spot whenever these bogus Alerts happen…isn't it?"

"Maybe we can find a connection," Chuck posits.

"Worth looking into, sir," agrees Carelli. "Well, guess I'll be off now. I'll keep in contact best as I can. I'll give you my card…though I think if you actually called, the FBI'd know about that. Might just be a useful thing for you to travel this stretch of freeway about this time, now an' again."

"We can do that," says Sarah as she takes the business card Carelli hands her.

"Oh—an' one last thing. Your other car, sir…the blue one parked up at Dead Man's Overlook on Mulholland? I'm afraid we had to have it towed—"

" _Grrreat,"_ grumbles Chuck under his breath.

"—to your driveway," Officer Carelli adds—with a wink and a tip of his hat to Sarah—then returns to his cruiser, switches off his flashing lights, and melts back into the flow of the freeway traffic.

* * *

**The next morning, in Castle**

"Rested and ready!" Chuck announces to his team. "Let's see if we can get a clue."

Sarah, Morgan, and Alex are sitting around one side of the briefing table, each with a laptop. Chuck stands on the other side: facing them, his back to the wall of monitor screens, and holding a new custom-enhanced iPad. He taps on the tablet computer, and a press photograph of a lean, sixtyish, grinning man with a silver-grey ponytail appears on the screen. The man is seated in a helicopter cockpit, wearing headphones and stylish wire-rimmed sunglasses, and flashing a thumbs-up sign.

"Seymour Packard—better known as Sy in the Sky," observes Chuck. "Decorated Vietnam War helicopter pilot. Drive-time traffic reporter for SNN since the late seventies. Always high ratings. Loved for his on-air jokes and his endless charity appearances. Good citizen and nice guy, it would appear."

"So no obvious reason for him to be mixed up in these crimes," Alex notes.

"And maybe why the FBI or CHP haven't jumped all over him," Morgan chimes in.

"Yet he always seems to be on the scene even before the bogus Amber Alerts go public," counters Sarah. "Just yesterday, I saw him do a 180 over Sepulveda Pass and make a beeline for Santa Monica—right before CHP got the call.

"And last night," Chuck says, "Carelli kind of hinted that they were at least interested in him. Okay then…so first, we need to find a motive!" He points down at their laptops. _"Go!"_

_(Music: "Occupied," by System and Station)_

All three of his teammates pounce on their keyboards and peck away for several minutes, as Chuck paces behind them, looking over their shoulders.

Then Sarah raises her hand and calls out, "Motive…maybe!" She points to the display screens behind Chuck, as the files she uncovered slide up alongside the photo of Sy in the Sky.

"Wouldn't have found this if not for our business arrangement with La Plata Gaming," Sarah says. "Our friend Sy's in the Griffin Book—blacklisted at every Las Vegas casino and most others around the world."

"What'd he do?" Morgan asks.

"Ran up some big losses a few years ago, then made it worse by falling in with an organized cheating ring to try and recoup. Says here that they were stopped almost before they got started, mostly because poor Sy bungled his role in the operation."

"Some of us are just plain better at it," Chuck murmurs, playfully, to his wife. Sarah smiles at the reference to their own Vegas escapades, and bumps her husband with her elbow before continuing:

"Sy still owes on his tab, and at least one casino's secretly contemplating legal action against him. They're proceeding with caution because of his celebrity status."

"Is that information shared with the authorities?" Alex asks her.

"Not unless they ask nicely—with a search warrant," Sarah replies. "So it's possible the FBI hasn't heard of this."

"Who led the cheating ring?" presses Chuck. "What's the Griffin Book say?"

"Already on it, sweetheart." Sarah returns to her search, and in less than a minute she's found a shadowy, blurry image from a casino security camera, which she posts to the main display screen along with the other intel. "Apparently this is the perp."

"Hard to make out much," Chuck says, staring closely at the picture on the screen. "Except that he looks awful scrawny and scraggly. D'you get a name, babe?"

"Uh huh. Might be an alias. Name's Carlton Amy…kind of unusual, huh?"

" _Amy...?"_ Chuck repeats—then staggers, as if he'd just been slapped.

Sarah rises partway out of her seat. "Did you just flash?"

Chuck shakes his head and rubs his eyes. "No…I didn't have to. I already know this man all too well. His name is Carlton _Ami_ —it rhymes with 'mommy.' He's a hacker…one of the most skilled ever. He and I kind of butted heads once before, and it wasn't pretty."

"So is he our guy?" Morgan asks, as Alex quietly returns to searching the net.

"He sure could be. And it'd make sense—his specialty is attacks on infrastructure, for extortion or sometimes just for a thrill. Nasty stuff…like once when he disabled all the safety interlocks at a nuclear power plant in Florida. Dude's quite the sociopath. Y'know how my hacker nickname is 'The Piranha'…?"

"Yeah…of course," says Morgan. "What's his?"

"Ami's is 'The Octopus'…because he gets all over and deep into systems as if he had tentacles! But last I heard, he was in Federal prison."

"Released seven months ago," announces Alex, pointing to the fresh data on her laptop screen. "Paroled to the L. A. area."

"Who's his parole officer?" Sarah immediately asks.

"Let me see," Alex replies, and searches for another few seconds. "Here he is. Someone named Sam Macpherson."

When Alex throws the man's photo up on the big screen, Chuck jolts once again.

"That's the one who eyeballed Molly and me in the ice-cream shop! I flashed on him and the Intersect pegged him as CHP."

"He was…but he quit. Or he was fired. There's surprisingly little detail here in his personnel file."

"That could be Ami's doing," Chuck suggests. "Digital whitewash. Macpherson's probably in league with him."

" _Wowww…"_ says Morgan breathily. "The _Octopus…!"_

"It's coming together!" Sarah exclaims. "Ami figures out how to hack the Amber Alert system—maybe because he turned or corrupted his ex-CHP parole officer somehow."

"But they need air support to make it work," adds Chuck. "So Ami contacts his former associate, helo pilot Sy Packard—and blackmails him."

"Or maybe he just offered Sy the chance to pay off his casino debt with his share," offers Sarah. "Either way'd have the same outcome."

"True that, baby." Chuck flops into an empty swivel chair and rolls it up to the briefing desk where the rest of Team Carmichael is sitting.

"…And one thing I do remember about The Octopus: he's hard to beat when he's got the upper hand—but it's a different story if you can catch him off guard. So we need to move this battle onto _his_ home turf…"

Slowly, deliberately, Chuck gets up, steps over to the electronics workbench, removes one of the five newly built Keys from the secure case, and waves it for the rest of the team to see. Sporting his lovable goofy grin, he adds, "A little help from my Dad might come in handy…who knows?"

* * *

**Several days later, four forty-five in the morning, at the SNN studios in a downtown L.A. skyscraper**

Seated behind his well-worn wooden desk in a big but cluttered office on the thirty-fifth floor, surrounded by walls and shelves crammed to capacity with awards and mementos and photos, Seymour Packard—Southern California's legendary Sy in the Sky—holds court with an attractive, youthful admirer at an unexpectedly wee hour.

"You're out and about rather early for a young and…hmm, shall I say…no doubt very _active_ college student, my dear," he declares, smiling grandiosely and leaning back in his chair—while also peeking surreptitiously at a digital clock on an adjacent shelf.

"Well, Mr. Packard—"

"You can call me Sy, honey. That's how this whole damn town already refers to me, after all— _heh, heh!"_ His bushy, silvery eyebrows twitch up and down as he speaks. "What did you say your name was again?"

"It's Allie," replies Alex. "And I knew I'd have to be here really, really early to interview you, because I know you start your working day early."

She flicks her head back and tosses her long brunette hair over her shoulder, then gazes innocent-eyed into Sy's Cheshire-cat face. "I already know a few things about you, you know…"

"Is that so? Well, what's left for _me_ to tell you, then, Angie?"

"Oh, plenty!" Alex taps on the iPad she's holding. "Let's start with how you came to get your job here. Is that okay, Mr. Packard?"

"Sy! Sy, please!" he jovially booms. "Of course, of course!"

"Y'know," Alex continues, "I chose you for my journalism class project at USC partly because you're so famous and popular…and cute—"

"Oh, _pshaw!"_ Packard interjects, waving the compliment off—although he's obviously delighted by all this focused attention from a particularly lovely young lady.

"—but also because I'd really, _really_ like to have a job like yours someday. Do you think that's possible, Mister Pac—umm, I mean, Sy…?"

"Well…why not, my dear? Certainly you have the good looks for it! But do you know how to fly a helicopter, Angie?"

Alex giggles. "Umm…no. Is that required?"

"Sure does help— _hehh!_ Now if you're really serious about your career plans, my dear, perhaps _I_ can teach you to fly."

"Wow! Really? That would be awesome!"

Packard looks over his shoulder at the digital clock again. "Hmmm…let's see, we've got a little time still. How about if I were to show you a little compilation of some of my all-time classic in-cockpit video clips….?"

* * *

**At the same time, five stories directly above, on the roof of the skyscraper**

Dressed head-to-toe in matte black ninja-style stealth suits, with their faces darkened and their eyes concealed behind night-vision goggles, Sarah and Chuck emerge from a stairwell and steal across the roof—a wide helipad illuminated only by red warning lanterns and a solitary yellow searchlight beaming straight up into the sky overhead—toward the SNN helicopter sitting still in the predawn gloom.

Chuck eases forward, crouched and holding a small sensor, wary of surveillance devices. Sarah moves more lithely at his side, with her right hand comfortably close to the pistol tucked into a pouch on her hip. Forty floors above the street, the air is a chilly damp mix of ocean scents and acrid vehicle exhaust. A slight breeze carries away most of the sounds of the city, except for an occasional siren echoing faintly from somewhere across town.

Monitoring Alex's banter with Packard, the Bartowskis feel admiration of their junior associate's acting skills, and mild disgust at the exposed ego and borderline lechery of the aging traffic reporter.

"So glad _I'm_ not down there with him," Sarah mutters. "Every time he says 'my dear,' my _stomach_ does a little backflip—he's actually making me a teeny bit nauseous!" She makes a face at her husband. "Or maybe it's just that convenience-store coffee."

"Poor Alex," Chuck replies.

"Humph!" snorts Sarah. "Compared to what _I_ had to do over the years for the Agency? She's getting off easily!"

"I suppose you're right, babe—"

_("Well,_ I _still don't like it!"_ argues Morgan—cutting into the discussion from his post in the Carmichael Industries unmarked spy van, which is parked on the street just across from the SNN building.)

Having reached the helicopter. Sarah pauses to admire the yellow-and-black striped aircraft while Chuck gets on his hands and knees and crawls underneath it, toward the bulky assemblage of cameras mounted on the bottom.

" _Bell 407,"_ Sarah sighs in professional delight _. "Sure would love to try out_ this _bad boy…."_

" _Hey babe! C'mere quick and look at this!"_ Chuck hisses from below. Sarah immediately drops and slinks beneath the fuselage to join him. He's pointing to an aluminum-clad cylinder with a single red glass lens aimed downward, mounted inobtrusively in the middle of four video cameras.

" _That_ device is no TV camera," Chuck tells her. "That's an airborne LiDAR scanner—it uses a laser to take incredibly detailed images, and it can even see right through foliage and other vegetation. It'd be really useful for singling out things like CHP vehicles…and roadblocks, even from quite a ways off. Know what I mean…?"

Sarah nods. "This could account for why our robbers have been unusually adept at avoiding capture on the surface streets. Another little service offered by The Octopus and his eye in the sky, right?"

"That's what I figure." Chuck rolls onto his back, takes out an iPhone and starts snapping digital photos of the LiDAR scanner. As he becomes engrossed in this work and Sarah keeps watch, neither of them is at first aware that the conversation between Alex and Sy Packard is tailing off.

Then—all of a sudden—the chatter stops, and Sarah notices _that_ instantly. She taps her earpiece. _"Alex! What's up, girl? You all right in there?"_

_("I'm not sure—I'm fine I mean—but Packard just took a phone call, then excused himself in a big hurry, threw on a leather flight jacket, and ran out of his office! I'm following him now…he can't see me…okay, he's just gotten into an elevator…uh-oh, going_ up! _I don't know, Sarah, but maybe he's heading your way…?")_

"Listen carefully, Alex," Chuck instructs her. "You completed your task, and now I want you to leave the building. Take the next elevator down to the lobby and go out front to join Morgan in the spy van."

"Just act normal and you'll be perfectly safe," Sarah adds. "You're in a public space."

_("I'm coming to get you, Alex,"_ Morgan assures her. _"I'll be there in the lobby in just a sec. Don't worry, Chuck, Sarah—I'll take care of her. We'll wait in the van and stay on the line.")_

Chuck pockets his iPhone, and he and Sarah begin to extricate themselves from their tight position. They catch the faint _ding!_ of an elevator chime, barely louder than the sibilant sea breeze—then the _thwush_ of the doors sliding open—and then, the footsteps of someone walking straight toward the helicopter.

Sarah peers over the nose of the aircraft. _"It's Packard all right,"_ she whispers. _"What do you think we should do now, sweetie?"_

" _Improvise,"_ Chuck suggests.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck. No way, nohow, no matter how much I wish otherwise.

**On the helipad atop the SNN building**

Packard stops about four paces short of his helicopter, to survey the full panorama of the helipad and the rooftop around it. Afterward, he takes out a smartphone for a quick call.

"All right, Sam…I'm here on the roof and all's quiet. So you can proceed with the meeting. I'll be in the cockpit waiting for your signal."

In the manner of a seasoned pilot, Packard walks a slow methodical loop around his aircraft; inspecting the fuselage, the skids, the tail boom and rotor, and the cameras and LiDAR scanner affixed underneath. Satisfied, he doubles back to the cabin door, slides it open, and stretches for the doorframe to hoist himself up.

From within the shadowy cabin, two big hands reach out to seize Packard's forearms and yank him inside; while one smaller hand, clenched into a flat fist with knuckles leading, jabs smartly into his solar plexus—knocking the breath out of him and preventing him from crying out. Packard disappears into the aircraft and the cabin door smoothly slides shut.

* * *

**At street level**

Alex and Morgan share friendly nods but exchange no words as they appear to meet by chance in the lobby of the SNN building, their paths converging near the main entrance. When they reach the revolving glass door, Morgan defers to Alex in gentlemanly fashion, and they go through it one at a time. But once they are out on the street and find it to be empty, Morgan takes a firm hold of his girlfriend's arm and leads her away from the building.

Calmly and casually, they cross a silent five-lane boulevard that will be choked with rush-hour traffic in about another hour's time, then walk a half-block south along the sidewalk to where the white C. I. spy van awaits them. Morgan unlocks the back doors of the van and holds one of them open for Alex.

But the street isn't quite empty. All along their short route to the van, they are being watched by a well-hidden agent with night-vision binoculars. After Alex and Morgan enter the van and close the doors behind them, the unknown agent comes up closer to take note of the vehicle's license plate. Then, he slips into a nearby alley to make a phone call:

" _Yeah, it's Grimes and McHugh all right. Just like you expected—Carmichael still refuses to take a hint…What's that, Tom?...No…I haven't seen_ them. _Probably gone in closer—damn freakin' Company hotshots. Adrenaline junkies, if you ask me! So better watch for 'em…."_

Once she and Morgan are securely inside the locked and armored van, Alex gives a little cry of nervous excitement and throws her arms around her boyfriend's neck.

"How'd I do? How'd I do?"

"You were amazing!" He winks at her. "Your role-playing was so terrific that it was all I could manage not to storm up there and sock that slimeball helo driver for trying to make time with my gal!"

"As if, Grimes! As _if!_ Eee- _yewww!"_ Alex scrunches her face for greater emphasis, then decides that kissing Morgan is a much better way to make her point. They lock lips hungrily for several seconds, before Alex abruptly shakes her head and pulls away.

"Shouldn't we make sure Sarah and Chuck are doing all right?" she asks, pointing to the racks of surveillance equipment that fill the back end of the van.

"Umm…yeah," replies Morgan dazedly. "Yeah. I was just about to suggest that."

* * *

**At the same time, on the rooftop helipad**

Sam Macpherson emerges from the stairwell, wearing a black flight jacket almost identical to Packard's, and carrying a laptop computer. He takes a dramatic pose at the edge of the helipad—standing rigidly in front of the big upward-pointing yellow searchlight, and with his back to the helicopter. He consults his wristwatch for the time, then waits with his eyes on the nearby elevator doors.

At one point while he waits, Macpherson tilts his head and cocks an ear forward, thinking he might have heard movement somewhere on the roof. He removes a small flashlight from one pocket of his jacket and sweeps the beam around. There's nothing untoward in sight. Macpherson puts the flashlight away, shakes his head and sighs deeply, and resumes his watch. Another quarter-hour passes before the elevator doors _thwush_ open once more.

A lone man in a long navy-blue pea coat, dark slacks, and a black fedora pulled low over his forehead emerges and walks over to Macpherson.

"Morning," the pea-coat man quietly says.

"Yeah it is," replies Macpherson with a snigger. "And morning rush hour's a different game, you understand. Not quite so easy to control all the variables. It's gonna cost you more."

"We're not worried about that. What _does_ worry us is what happened with your last clients. It was all over the news. So we thought we oughtta shake the routine up a little bit and keep the CHiPs guessing."

"Fair enough." Macpherson flips the laptop open and extends it toward the pea-coat man. "As agreed, you'll transfer ten percent of the value of the goods to our account now. We'll contact you afterward at the safe house to take payment of the balance for the completed job."

As Macpherson holds the laptop steady, the pea-coat man sets his fingers on the keyboard and begins to type. He logs into the secure website of an overseas bank, then accesses a specific account.

Meanwhile, Macpherson keeps talking. "Once you've done the job we'll relay a clear escape route to the safe house. Don't divert from this route—not even by a block. No guarantees if you do."

"Got it," says the pea-coat man. He stops typing and quietly says, "I'll need your routing and account numbers for the funds transfer."

"Of course." Macpherson turns the laptop back around and enters several strings of digits. Then he turns it back toward the pea-coat man. "Ready when you are."

The man scans the screen, nods in agreement, and stabs the Return key with finality.

" _Done!"_ he announces, in an unexpectedly loud voice—then, he takes a step to one side and pulls a pistol on Macpherson!

" _FBI!"_ shouts the amplified voice of Senior Special Agent Mazowiecki from somewhere in the deep shadows behind the pea-coat man _. "You're surrounded, Macpherson! Set the laptop gently on the ground…gently, I said!...and put your hands up!"_

Mazowiecki and two other FBI agents approach from behind the elevator shaft, in full body armor with assault rifles extended. The pea-coat man still has a bead on Macpherson as well.

Strangely, Macpherson seems completely unfazed. He leans forward with the open laptop, smiling, but makes no immediate move to put it down as ordered…and then, _another_ voice is heard: this one digitally altered and robot-like, issuing from the speakers in the laptop itself:

" _You morons have no idea what 'surrounded'_ really _means."_

With a resounding metallic _thunnk,_ all the lights go out at once—not just the warning lanterns and searchlight on the roof, but _all_ the lights in _all_ the buildings for multiple blocks in every direction. The rooftop helipad is swallowed by utter darkness.

"Big stinkin' deal," grunts Mazowiecki as he and his fellow agents flip night-vision goggles down over their eyes.

But as if in response, the high-intensity searchlight suddenly swings down, parallel to the roof, and _hizzzzes_ back on—blasting out not only thousands of lumens of yellow light, but also a hot wave of infra-red. Blinded, the FBI agents gasp, grimace, and throw their hands in front of their faces.

Macpherson crows, closes the laptop and slips it under one arm, and retreats behind the searchlight—where he's concealed an automatic rifle of his own. He sweeps the gun in a semicircle, firing indiscriminately at the FBI agents. Mazowiecki and the two agents on either side of him, in their body armor, are knocked unceremoniously backward onto their butts. The undercover agent in the pea coat flattens on the deck and avoids the spray of bullets.

FBI snipers atop the adjacent buildings immediately return fire. Macpherson ducks lower behind the searchlight, looks back over his shoulder, and frantically yells, _"Packard!_ What're you waiting for, damn you! _Fire it up!"_

_(Music: "Tailspin," by Los Straitjackets)_

The helicopter engine starts up and the four blades of the rotor begin to turn as Macpherson dodges and weaves toward the aircraft—with the laptop still clutched under his arm and FBI bullets _ptwinging_ around him. He flings the cabin door open, throws in his rifle, and dives into the copter, which lifts straight up into the black sky and out of the line of fire even before he has a chance to reach back and close the door.

Shaking in relief at his narrow escape from the FBI, Macpherson flops into a passenger seat with the laptop on his knees, and reaches up to the cabin ceiling to pull down a headset.

" _Mexico, man, Mexico!"_ he barks into his microphone. _"You've gotta get us over the border—it's our only ch—"_

Only then does he notice that there's somebody in a seat on the other side of the cabin—and looks across to discover Packard: trussed up, tied to his seat, gagged, and whimpering. Astonished, Macpherson glances at the cockpit. The pilot _—a hot blonde in a black ninja outfit?—_ turns around to grin and wink at him!

" _What the hell—?"_

But before Macpherson can do anything other than swear, someone else reaches around from behind him and _(snapp!)_ secures his right arm to the armrest on his seat with a pair of handcuffs.

"Hey there, Sam—you remember me?" asks Chuck as he grabs the laptop. "Let me lighten your load a bit!"

Chuck opens the computer and is confronted by a secure login screen.

"Hmm," he muses out loud, leaning over Macpherson's shoulder, "I could hack in myself—but that'd tip off the Octoman…I don't suppose you'd be willing to play nice and share your username and password with us, huh Sammy?"

Not surprisingly, Macpherson just glares at him.

"Yeah—I figured as much," continues Chuck, with a shrug of his shoulders.

Sarah looks back over her shoulder—and in a deliberately ominous tone, suggests, _"Maybe_ I _can convince him to play nice."_ Then she switches her headset to a separate channel only she and Chuck can monitor, and says, _"Buckle up, my love."_

* * *

**Eight hundred feet below, in the parked spy van**

"Chuck? Sarah? Do you read? What's happening?" Alex has to repeat her anxious transmission several times before she finally gets a terse response from Sarah:

" _We're okay, Alex. Stand by."_

Alex and Morgan exhale in relief—and in tandem. Reacting quickly, Morgan activates a miniature infra-red video camera mounted on the van roof and uses a mouse to aim it upward at the SNN helicopter—which is hovering in place high above the blacked-out downtown area. He and Alex huddle close to watch the action on a small monitor.

"I'm not sure what just happened up there," he says, pointing at the screen, "but the GPS in their phones and suits places Chuck and Sarah both inside that chopper."

"I heard shots…I think," Alex adds. "I wonder who's flying that thing."

A second later, they both emit girlish screams of shock and surprise when the helicopter tilts way over on its side—and a man pops out of the open cabin door to dangle helplessly over the abyss by his right arm! The man twists and writhes in palpable terror, desperately attempting to pull himself back into the aircraft.

"Ohmigod! Zoom in, Morgan! Can't you zoom in?" cries Alex.

Morgan works the control mouse, and the view of the dangling man expands to fill the screen. The night-vision image is too blurry and the man too frenetic for a totally clear picture, but at least now they can get a better idea of his size and build.

"That guy's not gawky enough to be Chuck," Morgan realizes. "So it's gotta be Packard…or actually, I think it's Sam Macpherson. Sarah must be at the controls."

"Oh thank goodness," says Alex fervently.

"They're probably coercing some intel out of him. Hate to be _that_ guy about now."

"He's getting _exactly_ what he deserves," Alex growls—sounding much like her father.

As they continue watching, the dangling man's gyrations gradually lessen as his strength wanes, until he can only hang limply. He eventually lifts his head toward the cabin door as if to yell out or plead. Not long after that, the helicopter flips over the other way, and the man tumbles back into the cabin. Finally, the aircraft levels itself and continues to hover, and Chuck calls in over the speakers in the van:

_("Morgan? Alex? Do you copy?")_

Morgan throws on a headset and replies, "Yeah, buddy—we're here. You two all right up there?"

_("Affirmative. Sorry if we gave you a bit of a scare just then.")_

"No problem. Couldn't be anything like what you did to Macpherson."

_("H'yeah…roger that…but listen now: Alex, I need you to contact Carelli at the CHP. Warn him that the FBI sting just went south and the Octopus knows he's being hunted. We'll try to contain the situation but we might need some help. Got that?")_

"Got it, Chuck," affirms Alex.

_("Morgan, I want you to get behind the wheel and be ready to roll that van at a second's notice. You're our chase vehicle.")_

"By your command!" Morgan clambers into the driver's seat and turns the engine on.

* * *

**Inside the SNN helicopter**

"So sorry about your trousers, Sam," Chuck tells Macpherson—who's now reduced to a gasping, sweating wreck trembling in his seat and holding his chafed right wrist. "But _you_ insisted on doing it the hard way, remember."

"You don't…understand," Macpherson moans between labored breaths. "You don't know…how cruel…and vindictive Carlton can be…You take him on…you'll get us all killed!"

In the adjacent seat, a bug-eyed Packard mumbles under his gag and shakes his head in delirious agreement.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Chuck moves to the back end of the passenger cabin, where neither Macpherson nor Packard can see what he is doing. He sits cross-legged on the cabin floor, leaning against the rear bulkhead.

" _FBI's ordering us to land,"_ Sarah reports on the private channel. _"Immediately. I'm ignoring 'em of course."_

"That's my lady."

Chuck opens Macpherson's laptop and sets it down, then slides his custom iPad and a short length of high-speed data cable out of the small backpack in his stealth suit. He turns the tablet over and opens a small cover in the back, under which is concealed a Key. He switches the Key on, replaces the cover, and powers up the iPad.

"Just about ready," he alerts Sarah. "I figure I'll have about eight or nine seconds to upload the data before Ami can cut me off. It'll help if you can hold the ship steady."

" _Will do,"_ she replies. _"But…you know it scares me a little every time you do this, Chuck. Just sayin', sweetheart…."_

"I know, baby. Me too, to be honest. I'll be careful."

From the cockpit, Sarah turns to gaze affectionately at him for a moment, and they exchange air kisses. Then Chuck returns to his task. He arranges the iPad and the laptop side-by-side on the floor and connects them with the cable.

He cracks his knuckles and mutters "Like I said—battle's coming to _your_ turf now, Carlton"—then unlocks the laptop CPU with the codes that Macpherson gave up, shifts his attention to the iPad, and triggers a flash.

Amped-up with the Intersect and interfaced through the Key, Chuck uses his iPad as a direct extension of his senses to pry into Macpherson's computer and internet accounts. At machine speed, he hunts for IP addresses, emails, images, GPS coordinates—any and all intelligence that could prove useful in tracking and cornering The Octopus—and stashes them safely in the iPad's expanded memory.

In the cockpit, Sarah works the controls with all her skill to keep the Bell 407 fixed and level against sporadic wind gusts and eddies, and waits apprehensively.

From within Chuck's virtual frame of reference, time seems to have slowed, but it is proceeding as always… four seconds… five seconds… six seconds… until, in the cyberspace ahead of him, he senses alarms triggering, countermeasures deploying. He can picture his once and present adversary stationed at his own terminal: caught unawares—but quick to retaliate, viciously— _and the Octopus is very, very good…._

… _but not nearly fast enough._

The laptop screen goes black as death—and Chuck's head whips back as if struck. But then he shakes off the blow, blinks several times, and smiles.

" _Chuck—sweetie—please tell me you're okay….!"_

"I'm fine, babe. Only got seven point six seconds but I think that was enough."

He flashes on the iPad screen, and absorbs the quick flood of encoded images that upload all of the data from Macpherson's laptop to the Intersect. Then another flash, and Chuck's eyes close for a few seconds as his brain processes the new information, finding patterns, zeroing in…until—with a fist pump—he exults:

" _Ami, you magnificent bastard—I read your files!"_

" _Huh? Come again?"_ asks Sarah.

"George C. Scott in 'Patton.' Seemed like a good moment for that line."

" _You got him?"_ she adds, more excitedly.

"Think so." Chuck's gaze is focused laserlike on his iPad screen as his fingers skate across the virtual keyboard at uncanny speed. "His IP trail's still warm. _Ho-kay_ —he knows I'm here and he's trying to spoof me—not gonna work this time, Carlton!"

* * *

As her husband closes in on their quarry, Sarah keeps the helicopter hovering in position above the roof of the SNN skyscraper, pointed east toward the early dawn glow. She notices a flickering of lights below, and looks out through her side window just in time to watch electrical power returning to the downtown core.

When the rooftop lights at SNN come back on, she can see a number of dark-suited FBI types milling about on the helipad and pointing futilely up at her aircraft. Agent Mazowiecki is back on his feet—and from the look of his gesticulations, rather upset. Sarah can't resist a chuckle at his expense—until Chuck breaks in on her momentary distraction, again using the private headset channel.

" _Found him! Ami's using a laptop on Pacific Avenue in San Pedro. I got a fix through the wireless provider—kind of a strange pattern though—he's moving, then stopping, then starting up again—"_

"He must be riding a city bus," Sarah instantly deduces. With a delighted glint in her eye—and a big sigh of relief at finally having a real target—she puts the helicopter into a tight banked turn to the south. "We can be there in eleven minutes."

" _Makes sense that he'd ride rather than drive. I'll mirror the trace to your nav screen and copy to CHP. What the hell—to the FBI too! Call it a peace offering."_

"Might be too late for that, sweetie. Mazowiecki and company were looking royally pissed down there—that is, once they were able to see their hands in front of their faces!"

Chuck grins at her and says, _"They can eat our dust!"_ Then he pings Morgan: _"You copy all that, buddy?"_

_("You bet, Chuck—San Pedro. Already headed to the 110. Right behind you, pal.")_

Tightly bound into their seats, realizing that the chase is on and fearing the outcome, both Packard and Macpherson blanch and tug at their restraints.

* * *

**Just minutes later, on the southbound I-110 Harbor Freeway to San Pedro**

The C. I. spy van barely gets out of downtown before it becomes engulfed in six lanes' worth of crawling morning rush-hour traffic.

"Spoke too soon, perhaps I did," says Morgan in his reasonably authentic Yoda voice.

Alex had been sticking to her post at the surveillance equipment in back of the van, but once it becomes apparent to her that the van isn't going anywhere soon, she comes up behind her boyfriend's seat and slips an arm sympathetically around him.

"Bummer," she offers. "Think we should try the surface streets?"

"Good thought. The only problem is that the next exit's a quarter-mile ahead and five lanes over. Who knew the carpool lane would be as bad as the rest?"

Alex twists her head around to eye him worryingly. "You don't drive much, do you?"

At the same instant, they both become aware of the police sirens: initially faint and somewhere behind them, but rapidly swelling in volume. Morgan looks to his rear-view mirror and spots two CHP motorcycles approaching along the left shoulder, with their red and blue lights blazing.

"Maybe it's an accident up ahead," he suggests, trying to stay optimistic. "If they clear it quickly, we might still get there in time."

But as the two motorcycle officers approach Morgan and Alex's position in the stalled traffic, they slow down and turn off their sirens. One bike pauses in the shoulder directly behind them, while the other officer pulls alongside the van and signals to Morgan to roll down his window…!

"Please follow me, sir!" the officer snappily requests. "Drive in the shoulder. We're here to make sure you get to San Pedro to help your team."

Seconds later, the spy van is roaring down the shoulder of the freeway at eighty-five miles per hour, with CHP motorcycles in front and back, to the full accompaniment of sirens and flashing emergency lights.

_(Music: "Theme from 'CHiPs' [the '70s-'80s TV show]")_

* * *

**At the same time, in the SNN helicopter**

The quiet tension in the cabin as the Bartowskis near their confrontation with The Octopus is momentarily lessened when Chuck's iPhone vibrates in his pocket with an incoming text message. He takes out the phone to scrutinize the text, and when he gets to the end, he laughs heartily.

" _What's that?"_ Sarah asks.

"Text from Carelli—says the San Pedro police have started searching all the downtown buses. And _—heh!—_ he also said Morgan and Alex are getting a police escort down the 110! Might even beat us there…."

" _Or at least soon enough to be of some use,"_ his wife replies wryly—and pushes the helicopter a little bit faster as they streak over suburban Gardena, about halfway to San Pedro. Off her left side, the sun breaks over the horizon.

Chuck turns back to his iPad, trying to pinpoint Ami's location, when Macpherson's sleeping laptop suddenly _toinks_ back on to a blank green screen.

_("Whoever you are…I'm impressed.")_ It's the same intentionally masked robotic voice they heard back on the rooftop—but this time it's coming through all their headsets.

Sarah whirls around in amazement. Packard and Macpherson shrink in their seats.

"I'm just an old friend dropping by to say hey…Octopus," Chuck calmly answers him.

_("I_ know _that voice! Damn! Is that you, Piranha?")_

"Nice of you to remember me, Carlton. Especially after all that time on federally subsidized vacation."

Ironically, Ami's digitally warped laugh sounds like keys jangling.

_("Well, guess I shouldn't be surprised. Deep down you always were a goody two-shoes, Piranha. And now you've gone cop on us?")_

"More or less," replies Chuck. "And speaking of cops—you'll be greeting a bunch of 'em any second now. Can't figure why you're leaving this transmission so wide open, Carlton. Tired of the chase maybe?"

_("Don't think so. While we've been talking, I just hacked into the local traffic-light synchronization and changed every light in downtown Pedro to green._ Every _light—meaning all directions at once—here, lemme hold the laptop out the window for a moment—")_

The sounds that follow are muffled and a little distant, but unmistakably the noises of screeching tires, crunching metal, shattering glass…and screaming people.

"You cold son of a bitch," mutters Chuck.

_("That's how I roll, Piranha. There's T-bones and fender-benders all over the map…cops won't be getting through to_ this _bus any time soon!")_

" _That isn't going to stop us,"_ Sarah breaks in.

_("Pilot's a lady huh? That's cool—she a cop too? Doesn't matter. 'Cause actually, Piranha, I'm counting on you to get here and soon! You're coming to pick me up—didn't you get the memo?")_

Chuck's jaw drops. "What the—?"

_("C'mon, play along—I'm improvising here! But fact is, you didn't leave me any other option. That helicopter's my only means of escape. I'll be waiting at Pacific Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Nice big parking lot to set down in. Hurry, please.")_

" _What makes you think we'll help you get away?"_ demands Sarah.

_("Well honey, it's either that—or I trigger a nasty big bomb that's next to the LiDAR scanner right under your cockpit. Which I'll do if you try to land that bird anywhere but Pacific and Fifteenth. Hate to turn your chopper into chop suey—_ tee-hee! _—before I even get a chance to check out your stuff….")_

_(As the helicopter flies on, the music continues: "Tailspin," by Los Straitjackets)_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck or even the slightest trace of any of its myriad characters—good, bad, and indifferent.

**Aboard the SNN helicopter as it approaches San Pedro**

The Octopus has broken into their headset communications—and with that, Chuck and Sarah are no longer confident that the system in the aircraft is secure on any channel. They have no choice but to slip in their earpieces, under switched-off headsets, and use the encrypted C. I. channel. While this has the advantage of bringing Morgan and Alex into the loop, earpieces aren't so easy to use inside a noisy helicopter in flight….

Chuck moves as far forward in the cabin as he can, to crouch in a too-small space right behind Sarah in the single cockpit seat. He has to grab onto her right armrest to keep himself upright in the awkward pose. Sarah smiles at him and lightly caresses his hand while he takes in her pilot's view of the urban sprawl beneath and ahead of them.

With their chins scrunched against their chests, and speaking into cupped hands to muffle the ambient racket of the engine, the two of them seem to be sharing a laugh over a private naughty joke. Far from it; Chuck is relaying impromptu instructions to the members of his team.

"…so it's _essential_ that we separate him from whatever device he's using for his infrastructure hacks—and do it quickly _._ Is everybody clear on their roles?"

Sarah nods and says, _"Yes."_

_("Same here,"_ Morgan concurs. _"Ditto from Alex.")_

"Good. Now, Morgan—what's your ETA at target?"

_("Ten or twelve minutes at least. Could be longer depending on how many cars your old pal managed to stack up in the downtown area.")_

"Hmm…Ami's expecting us in no more than four. You'll have to slow us down, babe."

" _He'll notice that,"_ replies Sarah as she begins to throttle back and nose the helicopter up slightly, to decrease its forward speed. _"Probably in no more than four minutes."_

"Yeah…I need to think of a good excuse, and quick."

_("We're goin' pedal to the metal as it is,"_ reports Morgan _. "Our two CHP escorts on those bikes are plenty ballsy, I'll tell you.")_

"Roger that—just like Drea Ortega," Chuck affirms. "And Team Carmichael is gonna take this slimeball Octopus out…for her."

Then Team Carmichael goes silent on its own channel, so Chuck and Sarah can switch their headsets back on. Not long afterward, they get an earful—digitally masked as before—from the slimeball in question.

_("Piranha? Piranha! Where you at? Better respond, man—you won't like me when I'm angry!")_

"Yeah, we're still here, Carlton. Sorry."

_("Figured your chopper would be in sight by now. 'Sup?")_

"Yeah…sorry…we had to slow up _juuust_ a skosh."

_("Not the words I want to hear, Piranha. I sure hope you're not stupid enough to try and pull something funny. My detonator finger is plenty itchy as it is.")_

"Of course we're not…umm, it's Macpherson—says he's feeling nauseous. I don't know if he's airsick…or maybe he's just afraid to face you after screwing up so—"

_("You think I give a_ damn _about how he feels?"_ Ami retorts.)

"No, no…of course you don't, Carlton," Chuck replies in a mollifying tone of voice.

Then he continues, faux-cynically, "But…since _your_ guy Sy didn't see fit to keep any airsickness bags on board, I'm assuming you wouldn't want to fly off to whatever luxurious secret escape destination you have in mind in an aircraft that smells of puke."

Sarah stifles a snort, and flashes her husband a thumbs-up.

_("Oh. Yeah. All right then. But if it looks like he's gonna, then just throw the wuss out the door!")_

"Okay, but I sure hope it doesn't come to that." Chuck glances aft at Macpherson who, with the cable unplugged from his headphones, didn't hear Ami's threat. Both he and Packard sit quietly, looking equal parts mystified and worried.

Chuck toggles his headset off again—just long enough to ask Sarah to lend him a knife.

* * *

**Minutes later, at the end of the I-110 freeway in uptown San Pedro**

Morgan and Alex stand on an off-ramp, with the two CHP motorcycle patrolmen and Officer Carelli, who has managed to get to San Pedro by a different route. Behind them, Carelli's police cruiser, with all its red and blue lights on, barricades the exit.

In front of them is a panorama of municipal mayhem: cars and trucks piled up at every intersection in sight; and dazed, bruised people milling about the wrecks. Fire trucks and ambulances are just starting to appear, weaving carefully through the chaos to reach accident scenes farther downtown.

"The only good news," one of the CHP officers says, "is that since this happened at the start of rush hour, nobody was driving very fast in the downtown area anyway. We're hearing that most injuries are minor."

"That's a lucky break," notes Alex. "But the Octopus still got what he wanted. And we need to be eighteen blocks south of here in six minutes…."

"Yeah—an' I dunno that we can help ya with that, ma'am," Carelli adds, regretfully. "The streets are a real hot mess an' we can't risk blocking out emergency vehicles, you understand…."

Morgan, standing to the side of the others and staring fixedly ahead, suddenly snaps his fingers and whirls around.

"What about the _back alleys?"_ he asks. "No wrecks in the alleys! Think we could navigate those?"

Carelli looks skeptical at first, then replies, "Maybe. Yeah…maybe. But do either of ya know your way around San Pedro well enough?"

Morgan laughs and gestures toward the spy van. "Doesn't matter—we've got one _hell_ of a good GPS navigation system on board! Gotta be worth a try, don't you think?"

Alex starts back to the van, with Morgan right behind. Carelli turns to one of the other officers and demands, "Lend me your bike—I'm goin' with!"

* * *

**Meanwhile, aboard the SNN helicopter**

Sarah taps her ear, signaling Chuck to switch from his headset to his earpiece.

" _More trouble, sweetie."_ She points to a small cluster of bright dots on her radar screen. _"FBI just put a chopper up. CHP's right behind 'em. I think we have ten minutes—max."_

"And these other ones heading this way?"

" _From the other TV stations. Looks like Sy in the Sky finally gets scooped."_

"We have _got_ to get there first—and fast," says Chuck grimly. "Ami sees an air show coming, he might try something really desperate, like interfering with air traffic control. Tell Morgan we can't wait—we're going in."

" _Roger that. Four minutes to target."_

Once more, Chuck goes back to his headset. "Carlton…you still there? Our ETA is four minutes. You should have us in sight any second."

_("Uuuhh little close for comfort there, Piranha…Okay, I'm walking over to the parking lot now. Nobody else around—which ain't surprising since I already told everyone on the bus about the bomb—_ snerk! _—and let 911 in on it too. It'll take 'em at least 40 minutes to call in the bomb squad.")_

"Covered the bases, haven't you, Octopus?"

_("You could learn something, Piranha. Not too late to apply for a job, y'know. Got a couple positions opening up.")_

"Yeah sure, Carlton."

_("I know, right? Actually, your job description reads 'hostage.' You and that lady cop pilot. By any chance is she a hottie?")_

" _More than you could possibly handle,"_ Sarah breaks in.

_("Oooh mama! Love a challenge—and hey—I can see you! That'll be me down here, waving you in. Nice and easy, remember. The bomb's on a dead man's switch right here in my hand.")_

* * *

**Soon after, near Pacific Avenue and Fifteenth Street in downtown San Pedro**

The spy van halts in a narrow alley behind a closed taco shop, a half-block north of the target location. Officer Carelli pulls his motorcycle right in behind, as Morgan and Alex jump out of the van and cautiously peer around the side of the shop at the vacant parking lot. There Carlton Ami stands, looking up at the sky, waiting for his ride, holding a smartphone.

Even in an oversized camo coat, The Octopus appears as gaunt and ungainly as he did in the casino security video—but his unkempt beard is gone, and his shaggy dark hair has either been trimmed or tucked completely up into his baseball cap. His eyes are concealed behind opaque sunglasses.

Morgan and Alex can't see the SNN helicopter yet, but they can hear its throb echoing among the otherwise quiet downtown buildings. It sounds as if it is only seconds away from arriving. Alex gives Morgan a quick kiss before he moves off toward his post, slinking along the front of the taco shop on Pacific Avenue. Alex maintains her watch at the corner of the building, while keeping her hand on something concealed in her jacket pocket.

Rotor wash from the helicopter is kicking up dust and trash in the parking lot. Ami starts waving his free hand at the yet-unseen aircraft.

The last structure between the taco shop and the parking lot is an unattended self-service car wash. Concealed by the clouds of dust and the roar of the helicopter, Morgan dashes across a driveway and into one of the wash stalls, less than a hundred yards from where Ami stands—then _gasps_ and whirls around when somebody slaps a big hand on his shoulder from behind! Fortunately, that somebody is Carelli.

" _Wait a sec!"_ the CHP officer yells into Morgan's ear. _"I just got a call there's a bomb on that helicopter! We shouldn't be this close, sir!"_

Morgan smiles and gives Carelli a reassuring pat on his hefty biceps.

" _It's okay!"_ he yells back. _"We've got it taken care of!"_

* * *

Aboard the aircraft, Chuck has gone aft to free Packard and Macpherson from their restraints. He plugs their headsets back in and slides the cabin door open alongside them. Then Chuck palms a handcuff key in his left hand and takes the knife he got from Sarah in his right. Seeing the weapon, both Packard and Macpherson shrink back in their seats. Chuck matter-of-factly turns toward Packard, and swiftly slices through the traffic reporter's gag and the ropes binding his wrists together in front of him.

After that, Chuck steps back but keeps the knife out in front of him, mimicking his wife's intimidating knife-fighting stance as best as he can in the swaying, confined space of the cabin.

Packard groans, takes a deep breath, and starts to lift a hand toward his mouth.

" _Don't—you—move!"_ Chuck barks through his headset. _"In a few seconds I'll let you unbuckle your seat belt, and then you can free Macpherson."_ He tosses the handcuff key into Packard's lap. _"But until I say so—you stay put."_

" _Unless you care to go out that door a little early,"_ adds Sarah from the cockpit, while momentarily rocking the chopper side-to-side to substantiate her threat. Now Macpherson really does look a bit green, and Packard shows no inclination to argue.

" _Why'd you keep me gagged all this time?"_ he asks plaintively.

" _Didn't care to hear any back-seat piloting,"_ Sarah tells him.

_(Music: "Before Your Very Eyes…" by Atoms for Peace )_

The yellow-and-black Bell 407 sidles in over the parking lot and hovers, only one hundred feet up. It makes a graceful pirouette in place so that Sarah can inspect the landing site, and then begins a slow final descent.

Ami puts his smartphone up to his ear and cups a hand over the mouthpiece.

"Make sure you land nice and gentle," he comments. "Don't wanna jostle all that nasty C-4 packed underneath. Gentle…gentle. You can be gentle, can't you honey?"

In response, Sarah opens her side cockpit window and glares angrily out at Ami as she sets the helicopter softly down on its skids and idles the rotor.

" _Hoo-wee_ —she _is_ gorgeous, Piranha…you sly dog!"

(Chuck ignores the comment and instead asks, _"What do you want us to do with Macpherson and Packard?")_

"Kill 'em."

_("Huuhhh!"_ both henchmen simultaneously gasp.)

The Octopus doubles over with laughter.

" _Ha-hahh!_ See that, Piranha? See how I can scare the everlovin' crap out of 'em? We geeks really do rule the world! But no…I suppose there's no need to kill 'em. Just kick 'em out on their asses—I've already fired 'em!"

Packard is first out of the helicopter—but only by a hair. Even as he's clambering down from the cabin door onto the asphalt, Macpherson shoves him aside, leaps out, and takes off at a full gallop—right past a startled Ami, across Fifteenth Street, and north along Pacific Avenue toward the self-service car wash and the taco shop. Once he's clear of the parking lot, he slows to a jog and looks around for a vehicle he can car-jack or hot-wire.

" _Freeze!"_ Carelli booms from behind. Macpherson looks back to see the big CHP officer bearing down on him, and starts sprinting again. Then Alex steps into his path, out from behind the corner of the taco shop—frightened but determined—while pulling a tranq pistol from her jacket.

Macpherson yells, "Out of my way!" and keeps on barreling straight toward her. When it's apparent to Alex that he isn't going to stop, she raises the pistol and pumps two darts into his neck from a distance of ten paces. Macpherson manages three more strides before his eyes glaze over and his legs crumble—just as Carelli gets close enough to grab him.

"Wow—that's some precision shooting, ma'am," says Carelli with admiration, as he produces a set of handcuffs to secure the limp Macpherson to a parking-meter stanchion.

Trembling slightly but elated at the same time, Alex replies, "Th-thanks, sir. Runs in our family, I guess."

"An' I won't even ask how you got a hold of a weapon like that." Carelli winks at her, turns around, and chugs back toward the car wash, where Morgan is still watching the action in the parking lot. Alex decides to follow him.

* * *

Packard slowly gets back to his feet and shuffles over to Ami, with his arms up and hands open in a gesture of supplication.

"Carlton… _please…"_ His plea is just audible over the growl of the idling helicopter.

"Aw c'mon, Sy," sneers Ami, "groveling doesn't become an A-list celebrity like yourself. And what part of 'you're fired' do you fail to comprehend?"

"Take me with you, man…I can get you safely to Tijuana…Baja…anywhere you want…just don't leave—"

"You mean you're not bothered by the bomb on your bird?" Ami presses him.

Packard looks confused. "I—I assumed you'd deactivate it before you got on board."

Ami throws back his head and cackles, then puts an arm around Packard in a friendly manner. With the other, he points at the cockpit window, where Sarah is still silently staring him down.

"So…I can either ride with an old dog pilot who kinda looks like Willie Nelson—that's _you,_ in case you're wondering—or one who looks like…well, like _her…."_

Ami drops his arm. "Think I gotta go with the blonde, Sy. Be sure to send me a postcard from San Quentin." He circles his forefinger in the air over his head as a signal to Sarah, then strides toward the helicopter, leaving Packard futilely blubbering in his wake. Sarah shifts her attention back to the controls and spins the rotor blades back up to speed.

A few steps before he reaches the aircraft, Ami wields his smartphone once more to alert Chuck.

"Prepare to be boarded, muh man! And do remember that the bomb's still live…and it'll stay live until your cute little helo jock gets me safely away. Mutual assured destruction and all that."

Chuck appears in the open cabin doorway. The Octopus does a double-take at Chuck's black ninja-style stealth outfit, then rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

"Holy geez, Piranha…Comic-Con's not for a few months yet." With his smartphone in his left hand, the master hacker steps onto the skid below the fuselage, reaches up with his free right hand to grab the doorframe, and tries—unsuccessfully—to pull himself into the cabin.

Chuck shrugs and extends a helping hand—and then, as soon as Ami grasps it—

" _NOW, babe!"_

Sarah opens the throttle all the way and pulls up on the collective lever, and the helicopter abruptly lifts about two meters off the ground. Ami suddenly finds himself dangling in Chuck's grip. Chuck swings him underneath the fuselage..and lets go! Ami lands on the pavement flat on his back, his smartphone goes flying, and Sarah drops the aircraft—just enough to pin the Octopus to the ground beneath the skid, but not enough to crush him.

Trapped, with the skid across his chest and his smartphone out of reach, Ami gapes helplessly up at Chuck, who sticks his head out of the cabin door and leans down closer to his adversary's face.

" _So how do you like her 'stuff' now, Carlton?"_ Chuck yells at him. _"I'm thinking 'knife-edge'…don't you agree that's some knife-edge flying she's doin' right now? 'Cause any lower and you'd be calamari!"_

Morgan is already racing across the street toward them.

" _Wait!"_ Carelli cries out. "What about the bomb?"

"There _is_ no bomb," Alex says as she joins him inside the empty car-wash stall. "There never was! Chuck knew it from the start, and we were just playing along with Ami to get him out in the open!"

She gently pushes the CHP officer in the direction of the parking lot. "C'mon—don't _you_ have an arrest to make?"

"Umm—yeah, guess I do!" So Carelli follows Alex into the middle of the parking lot, and seconds later he's standing over the defeated, immobilized Octopus.

" _There's your_ real _creep!"_ Chuck shouts, and points a thumb at Ami.

Carelli smiles, leans over, and clicks a pair of handcuffs over the hacker's wrists—then turns and motions to Packard to come closer for the same treatment. While the CHP officer is thus distracted, Morgan—who had stationed himself at the spot where Ami's smartphone landed—quickly bends down with a handkerchief in his hand to pick up the device and drop it into his pocket. Then he strolls casually over to the helicopter and secretly passes the smartphone to Chuck.

In the brief time it takes Sarah to lift the helicopter off the hapless Ami, land it a safe distance away on the other side of the parking lot, and shut the engine down, Chuck copies every bit of data stored on The Octopus's smartphone onto his own iPad.

A moment later, Chuck jumps down from the aircraft, then turns and holds out his hand to help Sarah climb out. She slips her arm into his and they walk tall across the parking lot, their night-black stealth suits incongruous with the swelling morning light. As they join their teammates and Officer Carelli with his sullen prisoners, they begin to notice the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles, and the _thrub-thrub-thrub_ of more helicopters on the way—several of them.

"Here comes the FBI," Sarah groans.

"Late to the party as usual," Chuck observes. He and Sarah shoulder-bump each other at the same time, which makes everyone else (except Ami and Packard, of course) chuckle. "I'd rather not stick around just for them. You?"

Sarah pretends to think about it for a moment, then shakes her head. "Naah."

"How'd you know there wasn't a bomb?" Carelli asks them.

"Well," muses Chuck, "let's just say I've seen a _lot_ of bombs in my line of work, and I didn't see anything under there"—he points to the SNN helicopter—"that looked like a bomb."

"And I trust him on things like that," adds Sarah, eyeing her husband proudly. "Always have. No question."

The FBI helicopter comes into view, not very far off.

"Time to go," says Chuck as he reaches out to shake Carelli's hand.

"Van's just around the block from here," Morgan informs them.

The arriving chopper kicks up another dense cloud of dust and loose paper. Under cover of the dust, out of Carelli's sight, Chuck carefully puts Carlton Ami's smartphone down at the same spot where Morgan had picked it up. Then two couples—each hand-in-hand—quietly walk away.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, but I can't seem to get it out of my head, either.

**(EPILOGUE)**

**The next morning, at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center**

With a small ceramic vase full of short-stemmed yellow roses in his right hand—and Sarah's hand in his left—Chuck walks along a familiarly busy hallway in the general-surgery department, alongside his wife, heading for the reception desk. In contrast to the bustle all around, the chairs in the waiting area are empty, except for one slim, middle-aged, strawberry-blonde woman in a grey business suit, talking softly on a cell phone. She looks up at Chuck and Sarah, as if startled.

The nurse on duty at the reception desk turns away from her monitor screen and smiles at the sight of the approaching, sharply dressed young couple bearing their floral gift.

"Good morning," she greets them. "And good timing—visiting hours have just started."

"Thanks," replies Chuck as he and Sarah arrive at the desk. "We're here to see Drea…um, Lieutenant Ortega. We heard she's off the critical list."

"Uh-huh. Are you family?"

Sarah nudges her husband with her elbow—ever so slightly—and with a flicker of her eyes directs his attention to a hallway on the other side of the reception area, where a uniformed CHP officer standing watch at one of the rooms is looking straight at them. Chuck squeezes Sarah's hand twice in acknowledgment.

"Umm…no," he answers the nurse. "Just friends. Does it matter?"

"It does. I'm sorry, but she's got a very restricted list of approved visitors—just immediate family and law enforcement." She points to the flowers in Chuck's hand. "You can leave those here and I'll make sure she gets them."

"But we _are_ friends of hers," insists Sarah. "You can't cut us a little slack…?"

Chuck glances at the back hallway again. The CHP officer is gone. Meanwhile, the duty nurse looks sympathetically at Chuck and Sarah, but firmly shakes her head.

"I'm very sorry, ma'am…but my instructions—"

Whatever else the nurse intends to say is lost in a sudden, explosive _clang-clatter-clang_ issuing from a storage closet off the back hallway—a noise that sounds very much like the racket of several dozen stainless-steel bedpans falling all at once from a high shelf onto the floor.

" _What the hell?"_ The nurse springs from her chair and sprints past the CHP officer, who is back at his post, looking deeply befuddled. But then, as soon as the nurse disappears into the stricken storage closet, he hurriedly waves Sarah and Chuck into Ortega's room, and closes the door behind them.

The heroic policewoman is pale, and drowsy, and wired up to all manner of pulsing and beeping monitors—but she's sitting up in bed, and her eyes brighten markedly at the sight of her visitors.

"H-hey there…great to see you both," murmurs Ortega, as Chuck and Sarah position themselves on opposite sides of her bed.

"Well, _we_ think it's great to see you doing so well," Sarah counters.

"For sure." Chuck shakes his head in agreement, and holds up the vase of roses so that Ortega can get a good look at it. Then he turns and searches for a place for it on a bedside table already packed with different floral arrangements.

"Thank you both…and _not_ just for the pretty flowers, I mean."

"Looks like someone else beat us to it," notes Chuck, still intent on the bedside table. "More than one someone."

"I _do_ have a really big family," Ortega says. "Lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. You just missed meeting a few of 'em, actually. They went to get coffee—and I sure hope they remember to bring _me_ some!"

Chuck manages to carve out just enough space atop the table for his humble vase by sliding a particularly flamboyant bunch of deep-red roses a little farther back. In the process, he notices the name on the card affixed to it—and chuckles.

"Ha—the big bouquet's from Special Agent Mazowiecki!"

"Is he trying to make nice for claiming all the credit for busting Ami and his gang?" Sarah asks.

Ortega laughs—then grimaces in pain. _"Ohhh!_ I keep forgetting not to do that! Yeah…I saw it on the news too. He _is_ kind of douche-y, I guess…I dunno…." A ruddy blush sweeps over Ortega's previously pallid face: an awkward indication to change the subject post-haste.

Chuck gamely tries. "So…Drea…did they say how long it'd be 'til you can get back on your bike?"

* * *

About fifteen minutes later, the promised passel of Ortega's cousins returns to her room. Sarah and Chuck deem that an appropriate moment to take their leave. On their way out, they flash appreciative grins at the CHP officer still standing watch, and wave at the duty nurse who's now glowering at them from the reception desk.

Then, just a few paces farther along the hall, they're intercepted by the strawberry-blonde woman who had been sitting in the waiting area.

"Excuse me," she calls out to them cordially. "May I have a teeny bit of your time?" The woman shakes hands with both Bartowskis, but then presents a business card to Sarah while directly addressing her.

"My name is Christine Crocker-Reynolds. I'm a senior executive editor at SNN, and I'm here about our helicopter—the one that took an unscheduled trip to San Pedro yesterday."

Both Sarah and Chuck are far too experienced as spies to let their surprise show.

"How's that?" responds Sarah with well-acted bewilderment. "Oh yeah! We saw that on the TV news last night…didn't we darling?"

"That's right," Chuck says. "That traffic guy—Sy Whatshisface—didn't he get arrested or somethin'?"

Crocker-Reynolds rolls her eyes dramatically. "That he did, hon…that he did. It's a disaster! Worst of all's that Chopper SNN is grounded until we hire his replacement."

She turns back to Sarah. "And _that's_ why I'm here talking to you…I'm sorry, did you tell me what your name was?"

"No, I didn't," Sarah replies. "And I don't understand what you mean—"

"I'd think that'd be obvious by now, hon. Sy Packard wasn't flying that helicopter. I've spoken with three different witnesses who all swear that the person who _was_ at the controls, helping out the FBI, was a pretty blonde lady in a ninja suit—more or less meeting your exact specs."

Sarah's face scrunches in disbelief. _"Haanhh?_ You can't be serious!"

The news editor continues, "There's a cockpit cam—Sy always liked to mug on the air—but some clever so-and-so turned it off. Any ideas about that, honey?"

Chuck and Sarah both erupt in sputtering laughter.

"Me flying their _—hyuhh!—_ helicopter!" Sarah bursts out.

"Hey _—snnnk!—_ babe," Chuck chortles, patting his wife on the back, "why don't you _—phhhff!—_ ask her _—snort!—_ for the _job?"_

That evokes a fresh gust of guffaws from Sarah. Crocker-Reynolds placidly waits a few beats for the two of them to simmer down, and then:

"There's no need to ask, hon. I'm actually here to see if you might like to interview for the position, Mizz—I'm sorry—I still didn't get your name…?"

"Aw, c'mon now," replies Sarah as she wipes tears from her eyes. "I barely know how to drive a stick shift!"

The SNN editor folds her arms over her chest and looks dubious. "Really? Because from what I heard—"

" _Ms. Crocker-Reynolds! Hey there! Ms. Crocker-Reynolds!"_

She slaps her forehead as Chuck and Sarah turn in the direction from which the new voice is coming—and their subtle smiles to each other signify that they already recognize it.

"Hello yet again…Agent Mazowiecki," mutters Crocker-Reynolds.

The FBI agent is running toward them, breathing hard and perspiring, with his tie swinging from side-to-side like a metronome.

"Excuse me." He nods politely at Sarah and Chuck—as if he'd never met them—then homes in on Crocker-Reynolds, who reluctantly turns away from her quarry in order to face him down.

"Can't this wait? I'm working a business deal here—"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but it's urgent. It's about your TV station's helicopter. Couple more important questions I've gotta ask you. And _then"—_ he grins broadly with the promise of something special—"if you'd like, I'll let you interview _me_ some more!"

Crocker-Reynolds slumps her shoulders in resignation. "Great idea…since we've only got about 45 minutes of footage of you so far…All right then, what is it you need?"

Sarah pokes Chuck with her elbow and mouths a silent _"Go!"_ And before Crocker-Reynolds realizes it, both Bartowskis are good and gone!

Except for another displeased roll of her eyes, the SNN editor doesn't act as if she's unduly troubled or even all that surprised by their swift stealthy departure. As soon as she manages to free herself from the pesky Mazowiecki, she darts off into the nearest secluded corner and takes out her phone.

" _No…no luck…didn't get much of a chance with her. But you know, I'm starting to think that with some digging, we might find more to this story…."_

* * *

**A few minutes later, on their way home in Sarah's Lotus**

Sarah appears to have shrugged the encounter off, but Chuck is still chagrined.

"How in the world did we let someone like her get so close?" he asks, shaking his head and looking blankly out at the ivy-covered freeway embankments zipping past.

"Simple enough, sweetie," replies Sarah. "We were thinking and acting like a normal couple visiting a friend in the hospital—instead of like spies."

"D'you think that's the last we've seen of her?"

"Probably not," Sarah suggests, and then laughs. "We'll deal with it."

"I'm kinda surprised you seem so amused by the situation, babe," Chuck notes.

"It's not really that—I'm just laughing to think that woman actually wanted to offer me Packard's job!" She elbows him. "So what d'ya think of 'Sarah in the Sky?' Kind of a nice ring to it, wouldn't you say?"

Before Chuck can come up with a suitable response, his iPhone starts chirping.

"It's our encrypted public line," he observes. "A 710 number. Bet I know who it is!" He answers the call.

"Hey, FBI. Thanks for the assist back there."

(Mazowiecki snickers. _"That was on account of the 403-g directive, Bartowski, and nothing more. Though I suppose we owed you a_ little _something for helping us find Carlton Ami. Especially since you won't be collecting any reward for it.")_

"Helping you, hell. You clowns had no idea it was Ami."

 _("Don't matter now, pal. Case closed and we got the trophy. I'm just calling you nerds to remind you that a 403-g is a two-way street—you get immunity but you stay under the radar. So don't bother trying to make any hay out of_ this _mission. We won't allow it.)_

"Aw shucks, Mazowiecki—and here I was already updating my resumé."

_("Listen—you got people working for you. The directive doesn't cover them, so we can't shield them like we can you, if anything goes bad. Keep that in mind. And I hope not to be seeing you any time soon, CIA.")_

The call abruptly ends.

* * *

**That night, at the Bartowskis' home**

_(Music: "Sweet Moment," by Bowerbirds)_

In their sturdy, comfy antique brass bed, under the covers, Chuck and Sarah cuddle. Sarah's head rests on her husband's chest, gently rising and falling with his breaths. He has his arm around her. The only light in their bedroom is the glow from Chuck's iPad, propped against his upraised legs so that they can both see it; they've been watching the late news on SNN.

"The Amber Alert story's already forgotten," Sarah murmurs. "We're old news, sweetheart."

"Can't blame 'em. It's gotta be mighty awkward to have to cover the arrest of your own big-name star. Oh, and about that..." Chuck squeezes his wife affectionately. "I think I've decided I don't like 'Sarah in the Sky.'"

She lifts her head to look him in the eye and, pretending to be hurt, asks "Why not?"

"Too derivative, babe. I'm liking 'Blonde Goddess of Traffic' much, much better."

"Okay." Sarah sighs contentedly and nuzzles back down into his chest, then continues, "Chuck—I've been thinking about our road trip to Chicago. Let's not take the Lotus or the Herder. Let's rent something else altogether…maybe something sporty but more classic?"

"I like that plan," says Chuck. Sarah lifts her head up again, this time to kiss him. He repays the kiss with interest, so she gives him another. This goes on for a few more minutes…then Sarah pulls back and gazes serenely down into his eyes, while her warm hand moves south beneath the covers.

"Do you think," she asks, "that a blonde goddess might get a little lovin' from her cocoa-eyed geek god?"

"Can't say no to a goddess," he replies—and grabs her. As Sarah and Chuck begin to wriggle and wrestle and make pleasurable sounds under the blankets, their brass bed stays mute, and the iPad slides noiselessly to the carpeted floor.

_(Closing credits and Chuck titles theme, by Tim Jones)_

* * *

 

**Chuck and Sarah Will Return in Episode 6.05: "Chuck Versus Route 66"**


End file.
